


Ars Moriendi:

by VladimirHarkonnen (TheLightdancer)



Series: Sex, Death, and Half-Demon Multiversal Sorceresses [5]
Category: DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, F/F, F/M, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, Making messes and fixing them, Past Rape/Non-con, Poor Life Choices, Suicide Attempt, marvel/dc crossover - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 72,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27369664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/VladimirHarkonnen
Summary: When the assault of the multiversal monstrosity known as the Azar is repelled, the multiverse takes another turn as the fallout ripples through the fifty-one worlds. Families and teams are sundered, hearts are broken, and in the broader cosmos a being who should never have existed broods and in that brooding comes to a fateful decision.
Relationships: Death of the Endless & Destruction of the Endless, Death of the Endless/Arthur Light, Death of the Endless/Koriand'r (DCU), Death of the Endless/Koriand'r/Raven (DCU), Death of the Endless/Raven (DCU), Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Garfield Logan/Raven, Garfield Logan/Tara Markov, Koriand'r/Raven (DCU), Sarah Simms/Victor Stone, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Series: Sex, Death, and Half-Demon Multiversal Sorceresses [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754041
Kudos: 5





	1. The End of the Beginning:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years have passed since Raven took the position of Death of the Endless. Death's mental state takes a further slide downhill and on Okaara an old monster begins to stir within its prison as events wind down a bloody course.

INTERLUDE , PART I:

**_A PLACE BEYOND WORLDS:_ **

Two irreconcilable powers that had sought to bind that which could never in truth be fully bound had erupted into a towering cataclysm of light. For a moment existence in the fifty-one worlds entered a kind of endless dreaming state, as if a great king clad in white had stretched out his hand and shielded stories with his own nature, the king of stories and their master rewriting worlds that were of his nature and akin to his likeness. When the light faded there was the Citadel of what had been the Temple Azarath, once a place of peace and tranquility where souls sought to detach themselves from bodies in pursuit of a great plan and a goddess's ancient rivalry against her foe. The very goddess who had demanded their immortal souls swear fealty stared, armor blackened in parts, her immortal flesh likewise singed and one of her eyes, for just a moment in time, blinded.

The person who had wielded such force lay between herself and the being who roared in sympathetic pain as parts of her that had been sundered from her for too long flooded back in. The sound was awe-inspiring, and for just a moment in time, as two entities materialized, one a being of infinite darkness in skin veined with molten streaks of red, the other a being white as bone with nine suns that burned within her eyes. They were judge, jury, and perhaps executioner. The entity that turned in wrath to the being that had taken things from her and sought to ruin them and to pervert their function, and hers stared with a power that made the other entity know not only lucidity, but fear.

Her gaze was cautious.

_**You know why I have done this. My kind are the hub of Existence itself. You have the power to end me, if so you wish, and to spare the universe the blight of my existence. Is that not a worthwhile use of your power, O Magnificent queen of the junction of life and death?  
** _

The entity looked around her. In a sudden blink of her eyes most of the things in the circle were vanished as the circle withered away as if it had never been. The Life entity, her son, returned to slumber. Perpetua screaming silently in the Source Wall as the repairs done to it engulfed her and she returned to the endless dreaming that was her intended fate, and to retaining the strength of that which she guarded. Nekron awakening on his throne, confused and horrified and humbled all at once by an encounter with the true nature of what it was he claimed to represent. Her true Ankh with its bar of blackness where it had warded off the full power of a hellish sword and saved her life then, around her neck and the nature of her power restored to a glimpse of a truth she had not bothered to show in ages. The waters of her gifts of life restored and cleansed by an angelic-seeming being of utter darkness save a skin of bone-hue, who stirred it and in the waters of Siloam gave life to an old legend once more.

Her blood flowing back within her and the wound where the command feather had been, her wings that had been broken along with her pride restored to a full and magnificent pair covered with eyes within eyes within eyes. A demoness lay broken between them, her body bleeding out, parts of her bones exposed, her life-blood flowing and yet Death chose not to claim her, and granted her for a time a somnolescence yet no less required to see what was unfolding. To see the reminders of what had always been true.

So too the entity whose hands had regrasped her sword, the sword's fires fading and its rune-crusted self placed back in a scabbard at her back, and who remained quiet and kneeling.

She knew of the observers and she did not care. This was between her and the three others in this place.

_**You have no right to tell me what it is that I must or must not do.** _

Her voice was the old icy one of her first self, hard and brittle and not broken and wanting to weep, for she understood then the truth of how this had happened and raged within, a rage and tears that this monster deserved not to see.

_**I have every right! My kindred and I are the ones who determine the fate of the Omniverse! Ours the decrees by which worlds die and are born!** _

Death laughed, mirthlessly, and with a slight note of madness in the laughter (and her sister's eyes widened and then narrowed for a moment in worry).

 _ **You arrogant bitch.**_ The last word made the entity's eyes widen slightly. _**Your kind originated five million years ago from an exile, cast out for slaying an older brother whom he deemed a threat to his own destiny. From an illiterate grubber in dirt who drank of a substance that granted godlike power you have become this, as you were meant to be. You are children.**_ **I _was old when Xoth in its fullness fell, when its king scrambled to the outer edges of Existence, and sought to command the Dreamer to awaken. I was there when Cthulhu fell from Heaven like lightning, and my works and my wards keep it dreaming in death, together with that of my brother, Dream, in this universe, and in others besides. It was there that I gained an understanding of my power, and of my function. Of what its limits are and what they can be._**

**_Your kind draw power from age, Azar. Your kind were old when humanity was but apes that scratched and whined and were carried off in the mouths of leopards, I was old when the Old Ones were, I saw their realms in their glory, and they were in their deep dreaming-death when my universe was in its infancy. My first one. Thirteen thousand and three hundred and sixty two universes have I lived, little Azar. Each of them trillions of years old, each time watching my siblings born, aging, dying. Making the same errors again and again in spite of all that I could do to try to fix things, to save them from themselves. You draw power from age, and yet you are a stripling. A vengeful child with suicidal frenzies who demands existence notice, that it care._ **

She snarled, the look of wrath on her face enough that the other entity gulped, the unfamiliar sensations of not merely lucidity but that and fear leaving her paralyzed and indecisive.

_**If I were like my counterpart the genocidal little monster in the other multiverse, I could do what she does. If I were petty enough to see the slights of individual entities, loosely defined, against my function. The new heroes are as the old ones the great successes of brother Dream. Their rising and falling is by the whim of Story, not of my function, so their rising and falling fits in his schemes and his concepts, not mine. It is beneath me to waste my time fighting things that would only fail and make myself look foolish, and weak.** _

_**Seldom am I angry, seldom do I desire to remind Existence why Death is always a thing to fear, as well as to love.** _

_**But YOU....**_ the last word bellowed in wrath as Azarath trembled and its skies cracked with the power of the word, and the monster fell to her knees, bleeding from her ears. _**You have done this. Get out of my multiverse.**_

She raised her right hand and her eyes flashed like golden stars and energies drew around the Azar, who looked at her with a sudden moment of dawning horror and fear, and then the light reached around her like petals of a flower or tendrils.

The fist closed and with a terrible antisound that rent existence the creature was banished.

The wrath remained, yes, but so did sorrow as she turned to the two entities that watched. The one with nine golden eyes nodded respectfully and turned to leave only for Death to snarl: 

_**You stay out, too. This is my domain, not yours.** _

At that the other entity was suddenly by her side and a giant as towering as her sister, clad in armor of shale grey and those nine eyes boring into the much shorter woman beside her.

Death stared at her with that same intensity of anger and then the entity laughed with an amused element to it and she too was gone in a brilliant flash of light, at which point Death turned her gaze to the broken body of Raven and wept.

_**I shall have words with my brother.** _

And then with a slight motion of her hand she began to place healing power into Raven, slowly and lovingly rebuilding the body she had come to know as intimately as it knew her own.

_**GARDEN OF THE FORKING WAYS:** _

The first inkling Destiny had of his sister's presence was a grip of unyielding iron hurling him against of all things her own statue, an impact that echoed like a thunderclap following. He saw the look in her face, anger leavened by sorrow and the knowledge that private griefs she had never meant to share with her siblings were exposed.But above all of that still, anger. And very much an anger directed at him.

_**I should have known when you gained freedom, even a short freedom, from your burden that you would not know what to do with it. Four more times in the long duration of this universe shall you have it. You condemned me to the Hell of something that I consented to, brother, even if in truth I did not. You made a demoness haunted by what she sees as the crime of her own existence and by the nature of the deed that led to her conception repeat that deed and call it love. You made my function and my realm fall apart and reality nearly unravel again, all for the sake of a freedom that was something you knew could not last, purely to have it for an interval so short as to render it worthless to an Endless.** _

_**Are you satisfied, brother Destiny? Do you not look upon your works and gasp in awe?** _

Destiny was absolute master of his realm and yet here, the fullness of his strength in his own sphere availed him nothing and for a moment he saw what Yeneli and Raven had seen in that moment beyond existence and he shuddered.

_**I shall devise a punishment suiting to the deed. Do not seek me, send none to do so. My function will endure, by virtue of the magick that binds me. You exposed all my secrets, brother, secrets and burdens I meant to keep to myself for a reason. You exposed things that should never have been again, and awoke the slayer of our sister whose lusts for me have not died, nor has her wisdom increased in brother Dream's work and his giving her as close to a rest as she could attain, under my decree. She only lives because I refuse to allow the thing that killed me twice to touch me again of my own will, until such time as I rescind it. One cannot forget a blade in the heart with the ashes of your sister's being on it that nearly rips you apart!** _

She let Destiny go and he fell to his knees, for a moment, gasping for breath and disturbed at this revelation of his sister's power, not needing his book to know that Death moved to the portrait in her own realm and did a thing that had happened in other universes mostly at their dawn, and in one universe where she had fallen in love with a mortal man and found herself captured by the Eremite and then the mortal man had died to free her and become almost a consort. The gilded edge was replaced by unburnished iron, and the gilded ankh changed to the stark colorless white of her own skin.

Then with that deed accomplished in all the realms of her siblings she returned to (and yet had never left, her nature and their nature being what they were) to the Citadel of Azarath.

In that same rage she exerted her power again and the monster whose sword was in the scabbard at her back found herself frozen in place by the power that she had come close to killing.

_**If not for my refusing to allow you, who murdered my sister and nearly murdered me, to touch me again you would have died on the blade of Diana of Themyscira and none of this would have happened. You are strong in magick, but you are not invincible. For all that you slew one of the Seven, remember that absent what is not protection but wrath and hate so deep that your very being is shielded by it that you would have died on the God-Killer and gone to the Sunless Lands at last, humbled by a mere golem made by lesser gods in lesser ages.** _

_**Do not forget this. I do not love you, anymore. I loved you once. I intended to propose to you, and then your blade in my heart nearly slew me once, and the second time we met when I thought you had rejected me, you slew my sister in wrath and nearly destroyed me altogether. I have not forgotten this, even if you blind yourself to that truth. For your deeds, your punishment is eternal life, until such time as I find it in myself to rescind things.** _

_**Begone.** _

Her fingers snapped and Yeneli found herself in an alien bar, staring into space for a time and then letting herself slump on the bar, finding a pair of mocking coins in a money-bag given her by the woman who'd rejected her. With the most powerful drink in the bar in her mug, she imbibed freely and let herself sigh, the fumes in her breath potent.

"Well now," she heard a rumbling voice speak to her right. She turned to see a very strange figure, one of the newer species. Brutish, as pale as Death with his hair only a shade lighter than hers. Dressed, of all things, like a Midgardian biker and with a very offensive-smelling cigar in his mouth.

"What're you supposed to be?"

_**I was a world-destroyer who slew one of the Endless and lost a chance to be the bride of Death. What the Hell are you?** _

"I'm the Main Man, last Czarnian, and mercenary with a mouth."

Her stare met his, levelly.

_**A mercenary, mm? Bounty hunter or killer.** _

"Bit of column A, bit of column B."

_**Interested in a partner?** _

The Main Man grinned savagely and handed her a cigar, which she snorted at, and used a trivial or less than trivial display of her power to light as soon as it entered her mouth. Both shook hands, and her grin for a moment was a mirror of his.

_**TITANS TOWER:** _

When Death of the Endless returned to the tower with the unconscious body of Raven in her arms, she was grateful that she had healed her before their return. The team had become friends to her, after a fashion, and while this punishment was an inevitable thing that would strike multiple people at once, it was not an easy thing to give, either.

Raven awoke, then, and levitated herself from Death's arms to her feet, seeing the original Ankh in Death's hands and not around her neck, and then her eyes met Death's with a sudden dawning horror and desperation leavened by sadness. Death's wings were restored to their fullness, unbroken and glorious, endless eyes of beauty that wept as Death's own wept.

 ** _This I do,_** she told Raven and Starfire, **_because it is the nature of things. You have wronged me least, and your actions were not of yourselves, and would never have been what they became absent the schemes of another. And yet by their nature, these things cannot be unaddressed._**

Less than an eyeblink passed between that and her standing before the Titans.

_**I have had words with my brother, about the binding, and about what it is that he made sure....unfolded during its span. I do not object to those who ask me to stay my hand, not as she asked. I do object to being held a thrall and made to act by the will of another, more than any other of my siblings. I am not Dream to indulge in sadism for its own sake, in a pointless demonstration of what is beneath my being, nor Delirium to retroactively alter an identity such that the person altered never knew it was after words were spoken.** _

_**She sought to bind me at the will of Brother Destiny and the only true favor she asked was that the hand of Death not touch any of you, for your team has seen too many die. That is no threat to my being, for at the end of each multiverse I am the last, and I depart until the next one arises. So not for that is this given, it is a punishment to my siblings, who made me a thrall for their games, for their own reasons, and expected that I would endure this and do nothing if it arose.** _

Eyes of gold stared in a terrible wrath.

_**They used the daughter of Trigon, Queen of the Malebolge, for their pawn, so it is fitting that they get a good look at what they used, and why, and I have seen enough of what happens when my function is disrupted. Secrets were exposed that I need time to process, and I cannot do that and fulfill what it is that I do, not as I am now. And so.....** _

A flick of a wrist that was deceptively casual and Raven was slammed against a wall by the weight of a thing held in her arms, deceptively small. On the surface it was an ankh of silver with a black bar just above the extended arms that went up to halfway through its curve, with jagged edges like molten power akin to that created by a sword of flame.

_**Until such time as I return, she whom my brother used to bind me and to wield against her a trap of her own psychology and of his own making shall fulfill my function until I see fit to reclaim it. Congratulations, Raven. You have gone from Titan to ruler of a dimension, now to one of the seven forces that underlie the universe.** _

_**In short, who sought to bind and wield the power of Death is, for a time, Death yourself.** _

Leaden arms began to move as the stupefied spell holding her team lapsed and they tried to stop her and Raven's own eyes met hers with a sense of hurt and betrayal, Death only giving her a communication that did not help, merely led to sadness. The ankh slipped around her neck and Raven screamed as her skin went from deep ash-grey, the hue of a corpse, to a bone white hue, as her hair became a flowing river of darkness down past her shoulderblade, and her black dress only shifted slightly to become a much darker black, the hue of an Endless.

Koriand'r shouted her name in sorrow, then again in anger, and leaped at the being who had for a time freed herself of a burden. And with that freedom, as he who was her brother before this and would be again later knew, came power in a different sense. Koriand'r's blazing wrath (literally) collided against a wall of stone that no force of mortal birth could move, and it did so with a force that cracked windows across Titans Tower.

_**I am sorry, for what it's worth. This is not your punishment, in truth, save that your punishment is to know that for a time your friend, for most of you, and she who loves you and is condemned by her nature to never fully show what she feels, for she cannot change what she is any more than any of the rest of us, died in your name, and in your honor. I am Endless, she is merely operating on my behalf for a time.** _

_**She will return to you. Be worthy of that return when she does so, and be prepared, for the change at work is not one given lightly and its consequences shall not fall lightly, either.** _

In a sudden moment she was gone and Koriand'r turned the being who was and was not Raven, who simply bowed to her team with a choked:

 _ **I'm sorry**_ and vanished the same way the other Death had.

Silently, the team stared at each other and bowed their heads, a deep pall of worry and sorrow and fear rippling through them.

**_CONCLAVE OF THE ENDLESS:_ **

The being who was and was not Death entered a place that she did not know and yet she had always known. Her tread was heavier than the other one, for she had replaced a dress that belonged to a face and a facet that did not exist with something that displayed her wariness, indeed her fear of where she was and what she was. Had she seen or known in the fullness and not these partial memories that were not hers, of the clothes of the Prodigal she would have laughed mirthlessly with an edge of weeping. Instead the Endless in conclave heard a heavy armored tread and turned and saw a lithe woman, her hair grown out but shaped into a ponytail, her skin as pale as bone.

Their elder sister had not taken the path of Destruction, nor her own prior path, nor that of Morpheus. Destruction had left in sorrow and nearly sundered his family beyond repair.

Morpheus had chosen suicide and Daniel Hall, now Dream himself, had found acceptance.

The Demoness given the power and the nature and the knowledge of one of their ranks found a wary acceptance from three of the entities in the room, the eyeless Destiny giving her a cautious, wary nod. So too did bloated Despair, whose nod was the friendliest of them all, for she too knew what it was to know such mixed emotions, and felt a small amount of resentment that this one's punishment would be shorter than her own. And golden-eyed Desire's gaze too was friendly, after a fashion, if leavened with wariness and more than a slight shred of hostility in that gaze.

Yet two of the entities gazed at her with utter hostility that made her very, very glad for the armor that gave her a bulk she did not possess and was meant to instill fear.

One was a small being that was and wasn't a child, ageless and moreso than god and forever the youngest of the Endless. The anger in her eyes was leavened by a sense of uncomprehending betrayal and hurt, the fear that their elder sister had forever abandoned them without telling them, and worry that she had not done enough to help her. Yet she was Delirium, whose nature was madness, and the emotions she felt were there but never more than flashes existed of how to sense them.

The other was a King in white, skin and hair of bone hue and eyes like endless night skies with wheeling stars that lived their full life cycles in his gaze. The sense of abandonment and all the fears of Destruction leaving and that this was in truth the second time their sister had done this was understood entirely, and for the first time in their lives the King of the Dreaming looked upon Hel, ruler of the Sunless Lands, with the kind of anger and loathing that he looked upon Desire.

For the first time in their infinite lifespans across tens of thousands of universes, Hel met that stare and did not return it with the searching empathy their elder sister always had, but with a wariness that saw her eyes take on a shade of red and a pall of daemonic power erupt from her, their sister's function and her nature tainted, in their eyes, by that which had been dragooned into succeeding her.

The being that was and wasn't Death spoke with four voices in a fell harmony.

_**Your sister decreed a punishment for our eldest brother for the crimes that he has done. And I am that punishment. Until she returns, I am one of you. Your like or dislike of this is as irrelevant as the old King who tried to tame the tides to prove humility and became a parable of hubris.** _

An ugly silence fell, and Destiny felt the nature of his sister's carefully studied slap back for all that had been unleashed since the thing from beyond the Wall had latched onto the Raven of one of the worlds of Hypertime and this corner of the multiverse had been wracked by two incursions of things of the Outer Light. The ugly silence stretched on uncomfortably as the armored entity moved to their sister's chair and sat herself down in it, her eyes taking on a glow of red that would never fade until their sister returned.

Those eyes turned to Destiny and he opened his book to the panels of his siblings, Despair remaining superficially apathetic (though the blood that flowed from her cheek where her hook ripped showed the truth of her feelings). Desire cautious, constantly sending glances at the entity on the other side of the table. Delirum's hands oozing kaleidoscopic fire in her wrath. Dream silent and brooding and very much Morpheus in white. And among them, too, a being in a suit of black armor with a silver ankh sealed into the breastplate with reddish eyes of Hell. There sat Death, and Hell would follow with her.

He began to speak words, knowing all that would unfold, and yet in truth at this moment he knew that he regretted nothing but would come to regret everything by the end of the events that would unfold.


	2. Decisions and Indecision:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the interlude between Death's disappearance and her return, Raven adjusts to her new tasks and her new responsibilities, and the weirder world in which she now finds herself. 
> 
> The Endless are caught between stages of grief and worry. 
> 
> The main man and his firey new partner are given a new bounty by a disgraced princess, as a new crisis looms in the vast planetary system known as the Vega system.

_**OKAARA, VEGAN SYSTEM:** _

"Well excuse me Princess," huffed Lobo. "You can't blame me fer not usin' yer title when you look like that and are in a place for fightin', not princessin'." 

Komand'r shot him a look with flashing purple eyes that would have turned lesser beings into paler than Lobo's own skin color with sweat drops.

"I want my sister, and I want her here. There are.....issues...here. More than our usual rivalry but if I do it myself we'll fight and what we need to happen won't happen."

The Main Man looked to his partner, who flashed him a sudden and rather unpleasant smile.

 _ **Won't they be so pleased to see me again,**_ she spoke, and the heat of her presence led to a vast heat distortion mirage within the chambers, one that Lobo disregarded due to his Czarnian biology but one that left Blackfire and various soldiers in the region coughing and nearly choking to death until she stilled it. Yeneli stilled the heat but her smile left Blackfire slightly worried. She had not changed _that_ much since the incident with the 'Wildfire' in the past. She hated her sister, believed herself the rightful figure to hold the throne. Yet if the thing hidden within Okaara erupted outward, there would be no throne and no people and a 'victory' such as that would leave her choking on ashes.

The two mercenaries departed, Blackfire's look at them one of caution. This.....she shuddered.

Next to this she'dve rather risked the tender mercies of the fell creature Damyn, as she had before she'd killed him and usurped his armies.

She hadn't heard much from the quiet spies she'd sent to Earth to keep tabs on her sister of her sister's lover in the last two years. Something very strange involving one of the Seven Primordials had happened, and Earth, of all planets, had been home to one when death itself had seemed to die. In the last two years what had passed for normality had reasserted itself, and yet it seemed darker. Raven, the one of the team she feared most for she knew more than most of the legends of the fallen demon-prince of the Eighth Circle, was gone. 

_**THE APARTMENT OF DEATH, JUST OUTSIDE THE SUNLESS LANDS:** _

The place had changed since Raven had 'ascended', if that was in truth the correct word, in what was a mote of an eye to her half-understood senses and every bit of two mortal years to what was still her as she had been. Her ascension had seen her revive the functions that she carried out, to breathe life into the born, and to see death in all its forms. She came to people in the most horrid forms of her function and in the more benevolent ones, and had seen and understood infinitely more than she had imagined. In one small portion of a much vaster complex of multiverses, for a time, she had become one of the Endless and she understood so much more than she had ever imagined.

The sheer longevity of Death of the Endless, the degree to which her actions were as much a gesture to step into a world where a vicious genocidal warlord had enslaved and sought to corrupt a version of her, and where her counterpart, newly freed, hovered on the brink of self-destruction. And other things, besides. She had seen the tapestries and stared in mute horror at her own face and at a vision of a future she had shut out lest it overwhelm her.

Death had puzzled her in the closet full of floppy hats, in her two goldfish (who for the time being she had placed with Dream in an intended gesture to try to soften him that had....not gone well). And in, of all things, a teddy bear that she left forlornly and occasionally dusted. She had moved her own things into the apartment, to give herself a sense of normality, though they did not always mesh well. There was a shadowy element here where the darkness grew red eyes and snarled with inhuman voices, which had not been there. There was also a sense of forlorness about this, of loneliness.

The realm almost seemed like it had either given up on its absent mistress or that it mourned for her.

Even now as a part of Raven knit, a habit of hers she used when she was stressed even if technically she did not need the kind of release it provided, she was in countless millions of worlds and accompanying millions of souls. She had seen much and learned much and at times her mind almost shattered under the strain, and at others...she had achieved an improbable feat, her old emoticlones had merged when she became Death of the Endless, for a time.She hoped that this, at least, would last, though she was not quite certain of it doing so. 

Infinite worlds and infinite shades of fear and sorrow and desperate pleas, yet it was only in her to grant a few of them, and then for deeper reasons if her....not-quite-brother...nodded to do so. Death, she understood with memories that were and were not her own, sought to be a friendly presence, but then she had had reasons to be. She did not. She was, in the end of things, a daughter of Trigon and the mistress of an entire plane of Hell. She was much more the fourth horseman with Hell following in her train, and she tried not to be anything else.

She was not the entity that had tossed her this ankh, she could not pretend to be.

So she arrived, time and time again, crossing the broader depths of an immensity she still but dimly perceived, everywhere and in all places, not as a friendly and welcoming face to accompany people to the sunless lands, but as a tall and vast being whose black armor merged with her shadows, pale of skin and with eyes that glowed like blood-hued flames. Hers was a presence that instilled fear and turned the hatred and anger at the concept of dying to falling to knees in utter horror at what awaited them in that time between life and death.

Death spoke to them, understandingly, returning harsh words with kindness and in the end even those who hated her gift most were grateful for her company. Where she who was and was not Raven of the Malebolge as well as Death appeared, there was only fear and wary silence, even if the road to the afterlife was determined as all things were: by a blend of belief and pacts between deities for quota of souls. In truth it was humbling, for in this she grasped the paradox of what she was and who she was. She was there at birth and death, though she was not the precise cause of either.

If she had willed it she could have taken her power and become a greater monster than the being of curvy form and skeletal face in the other multiverse, able to obliterate entire universes on a whim. Yet she did not will it, for life was as precious as death, and each were part of who she was and would be and always intertwined.

She missed her love deeply and wondered where she was and what she was doing, but it was not an easy thing. And she missed Koriand'r, too, and that too was not something so neatly resolved as all that.

She went to one of the shelves and then paused, suddenly.

 _ **The....Sandman? By Neil Gaiman? What**_ **is _this?_** She saw a collection of, of all things, a set of graphic novels. ten volumes and various omnibus collections, two collections that had a name that made her raise an eyebrow and murmur something about **_that damned bartender_** and then two more that made her freeze in sudden bemusement and a horrid curiosity. _**The Deluxe Death? What the fuck?**_

An obsidian and ornate gauntlet was placed on the couch, and she used her now paler hands with long black nails to pick up the bigger volume that was reassuringly hardback, and with trembling hands decided to see just what this was, and how it was her and why it was here, why the signature on it was so prized and the sense of strange commentary that went with it was there.

_**THE PALACE OF DREAM OF THE ENDLESS, THE DREAMING:** _

If anyone had told Dream of the Endless, in any shape or any form, that he would be seated in his form as an abstract being of multiple eyes and angles, a veritable embodiment of the inconsistency and wheeling nature of Dreams and Dreaming, at a table beside Desire, whose presence was as a singularity and mirror in one, devouring all things and reflecting both itself and what they sought most, he would have seen it as a bad joke and devised some suitable nightmare to haunt that person for forty nights. Still moreso would have done that if he had heard of the _other_ being who had shown up, unannounced, when the two were talking and trying to make sense of the changes that were new as the morning dew and that ached with a sense of failure, of incomprehension. 

_You look like you,_ Desire said cautiously to xir older brother, as Destruction's brooding face looked at them both sharply.

 **What......happened,** he spoke in a deeper voice with gritted teeth. **What....happened...to our older sister? She does not look like herself. She does not feel like herself, either. I am change, I can and I will change further with time. This? What. Happened?**

Desire looked at xir brother with cautious optimism leavened with worry, and prepared to speak. 

Then looked to Dream and shrugged.

 **Our sister,** Dream spoke, **ran afoul of a particularly unpleasant entity from the Outer Light. It came to this corner of our spheres and tried to devour them twice and has lost all attention by now, I suspect. It was always that unlovely combination of a rolling juggernaut and too flighty to do much of anything that mattered, for a strange kind of cruel mercy. She drove it off the first time and it retaliated for the favor by simultaneously trying to kill her and get her to kill it. It gave our brother the freedom to move, and to act, and our brother handled his new circumstances....poorly. He drew her into another relationship that should never have been, and she chose to react to that by placing his pawn as a.....successor.**

 **Have you seen her?** The hope in his voice and in his being was painful enough that for a moment he congealed into a form akin to that of Morpheus, though Desire remained in xir true shape. 

Destruction shook his head. **Only the being that took her place.** He frowned. **For what it's worth, I will keep my eyes out for her, and if I do find her, I will let you know. She may talk to me, if not to any of you.**

The disappointment in Dream registered in the sudden cloudburst that stormed in a most literal sense in the Dreaming, though the palace remained dry. Desire's form shifted from xir true face to the form akin to Dream's, placing xir hands on Dream's shoulder. The feud had not been forgotten, nor could it be, but there were other, deeper issues to confront. Not least among them the difficulties of adjusting to a world where their sister had, for a time, managed to do what Destruction had not and had given her nature and her function to a sort-of-successor who was not truly one, the way the new Dream and the new Despair (still the new Despair to Desire after all these years) were. 

Their brother had not been there long, and then the Prodigal had departed once more, and that only underscored why the feud was on hold.

Their family life had been fragile since the Prodigal left, and to give into xir usual nature risked shattering things too far. Xie could go back to baiting Dream for sport when their true sister returned, not this armored demonic _thing_ transformed into some unholy hybrid of the Eighth Circle and one of them. The _thing_ was an unsubtle message even to xir, a reminder that Death agreed with xir older brother. Mortals were the masters of the Endless, and one that took, even briefly, the form of one could and did showcase that by how readily it adjusted or did not adjust.

And there was that sick hollowness, the rage and impotence and fury that xir family was at the edge of an abyss, where actions one way or another could tip it, and understanding at last why xir sister took family so much more seriously than the mere function. A fell demonic force had set itself in their family as a cruel mockery of so many things Desire knew in what was equivalent to the marrow of xir bones were true. That monster pretended to be their sister, but their real sister was hidden and Desire wished, in a sense, that xir eldest sister would reveal her longer-term plans if plans she had, but that was unlikely and would remain so. 

So the brother and brother-sister talked and enjoyed a painfully awkward and stilted and yet in its own ways no less welcome moment of being siblings, rather than the spiteful master-mistress of xir own idea of fun.

_**TITANS TOWER:  
** _

It was the anniversary of _that_ day, two years ago, where their friend had died once more, again a pawn in schemes old long before she was born. There was a moment of sadness in the team that could never quite vanish, a sense of loss that had not faded but intensified. Only Zatanna Zatara, of the League, understood it to a degree, for the ways she looked at Doctor Fate helped explain elements of it, and she had become if not quite an unofficial member, certainly someone to whom the team unburdened itself. She resented the ways the cosmic entities manipulated people, though she saw that most of the team coped well.

Only Starfire and Changeling had had the most difficulties, Changeling pouring himself into the superhero business as a diversion, making himself one of the world's most known heroes and one who'd gone from derision to genuine fear due to his creativity in wielding his powers, even if his visible elements meant that he had to deal with not being available in any real sense for stealth. Starfire had sunk into a deep funk, one that had led her relationship with Dick to enter into a bit of a strained period. He missed Raven no less and the seeming torpor to potential outright severing of their bond had had its own elements on him, making him feel lonelier and more isolated than ever.

Even the Jump City Rogues had changed, Doctor Light moving to a grade A threat so long as Raven had vanished for an indefinite period of time, several of the less powerful Rogues leaving in the wake of the appearance of the Norse Gods and the Jotnar. Instead, some of Superman's enemies had moved to where they expected (and due to the presence of two Amazonians and a Kryptonian on the team, as well as a junior Flash actually go) major fights worth having. The Atomic Skull was now a recurring Titans enemy, along with the strange monster Rampage.

Raven's presence had been...unconventional, and after the Trigon incident and the open revelation of her demonic nature she had become still more unconventional and a point of pride. She had never courted publicity yet her city missed her as much as her team did.

And yet for all that it was something that completely blindsided Victor Stone when he'd gone to get the mail and the newspaper, a small and entirely human pleasure he indulged himself in, to find himself staring at a woman with black hair that had deep purple streaks, indicating one or the other color was dyed and he wasn't sure which. She was of Chinese heritage, much like the few known pictures of Raven's mother, Arella, also known as Angela Roth of Gotham. enough like her that she could have passed for a very close duplicate, minus the gap in hair color. Her eyes too were that unnatural keen purple hue.

She looked at the Tower uncertainly, with a bittersweet look, then closely at the puzzled Black half-robot who cocked his head with a complete incomprehension of who she was.

Another bittersweet smile crossed her face.

"Hello. My name is Alice Williams. I've been looking for information on my niece, Rachel. I was told the best place to look is....here."

She did not understand why the Cyborg looked at her strangely, nor the tone in his voice when he informed the team of their visitor, but she gracefully took her first steps into the strangeness of Titans Tower. Her husband had wanted to come with her, and her kids, but superheroes were not always the most welcoming, especially if you found out or realized a secret identity, so she wished to take this risk alone.

_**A BAR, LONDON:** _

Hob Gadling was stunned to see his old friend there, though now he was clad in that white-on-white-on-white appearance instead of the brooding darkness he'd known for so long.

"You're early," he commented with a wry quirk to his voice.

 **I am,** was all Dream of the Endless said.

**I am.....lonely. It helps to talk to a friend, when you're lonely. Or so my sister said.**

The sadness in his voice made Hob squint and then jolt up. 

"Stars are burning, last time I checked. She's not sick again is she?"

Dream shook his head.

**No, she's......given her task to a successor. A thing that has never quite happened like this in the history of the Endless, and I do not know what to do with it. Not sure if to grieve or how to accept something that will not last, but....**

Hob said "Get my friend here some vodka, best stuff you've got" to the bartender. 

It was fortunate that the outbreak of the potential new disease in China had been snuffed by super-medicine early on, he couldn't have imagined trying to quarantine while immortal. He'd caught a glimpse due to shenanigans involving the Man of Steel and a cross-time powered set of villains calling themselves the Authority of a world without superheroes and the hilariously (so long as one was several dimensions away from it and it was not something that affected flesh and blood people) dysfunctional shithole they called a world. No, 2020 in a world of jetpacks, talking gorillas, and murder clowns with a bigger bodycount than some full-fledged formations in conventional wars was definitely a better place in that way.

It meant he could ask for his friend to get a strong drink, and then lean forward and just try to talk to him man to anthropomorphic personification that made Gods and Goddesses crap blood if he gave them a single dirty look.

_**ANOTHER BAR, NEW YORK CITY:** _

A woman sat at a bar, nursing a full mug of beer. 

The encounter with Kara Zor-L had helped the loneliness some, but it couldn't fix everything any more than things with Raven could, or did. Part of her knew that it was cruel to give her family this kind of warning and message, and yet in the end, she was of their blood and their lineage too. Even if she was undeniably older and she just kept going on and on. It wasn't the thoughts of Raven or even that that had her so deep into the booze, this time. It was the encounter with the near-feral thing in the gladiator arena that was another manifestation of her as a multiverse saw her.

There, an old familiar creep had actually gotten his wishes (and her body had undergone an old and all too familiar loss at some point). That version of her had dark and coarse elements of fell magic threaded through her that gave her an appearance like a twisted version of the Norse Hel. She had effortlessly faced her in that arena, let her cry and tried to offer counsel and yet all she feared she'd done was damn another multiverse to what happened if a version of her started to look where she should not. What was true of the Raven here was not necessarily of the one there and.....

Another stiff drink.

She had tried to fix things and there she hadn't quite pulled it off. Now here she was, in the so-called Prime universe, of the cluster where she had been. The Earth where not so long ago she'd manifested as just 'DiDi' back in the day, in the halcyon days of the 90s. Now here she was, Didi D'Eath once more, her function held by another, and herself merely, _merely_ a being with enough reality-warping power that she could remake this entire universe with a thought in her image and likeness any time she wished and only the sons of Yahweh or Ellaine Belloc herself could stop her.

She could, but she did not want to.

Then she heard a voice that she had not heard since 1995, when he had been a sixteen year old suicidal child she'd shown a better way in one of the most memorable days she'd had.

"Didi?" The voice was that of a middle aged man, now, and she froze, hands on the mug.

She turned around to see a man whose hair was still long, around male pattern baldness (though it was still _his_ hair). He had a bit of a paunch but only a bit of one, and he had a thicker mustache with a short Van Dyke Beard.

"Sexton?" Her voice was one of surprise.

Sexton Furnival, who had grown up to be a slightly paunchier mirror of his father, though a very different man in other ways, broke into the biggest smile he'd had in years.

"You don't look like you've aged a day."

Didi let herself smile, though it didn't meet her eyes. He noticed that and his smile faded.

"Want to catch up, for old time's sake?"

He held two coins in his hand, pennies.

"Ever since that day I've held onto these. It was a day to remember, and now that I see you...."

Another smile that didn't meet her eyes.

"Sure. Let's go." She finished the beer and in spite of drinking eighteen full glasses like that, her steps were perfectly level, for it was a curse of what she was, even if her sigil and function were technically on loan, so to speak, to another that she could drink but never truly gloriously get drunk unless someone enchanted the booze. Side by side, as she put her hand on the brim of her top hat, they faded into the crowd as a bittersweet nostalgia poured through her at the thought of this, and of what it meant.


	3. Reunions:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Main Man and his new colleague go to Earth to collect on their bounty. 
> 
> In another universe, old friends catch up.

_**JUMP CITY, EARTH-48:** _

Lobo grinned when he and his new...colleague, he'd decided was the best word for the Main Man's new pal, arrived. It was always a Hell of a thing, literally, as she seemed to quite literally summon and dissolve them in fire and rebuild them out of it. Maybe. He wasn't entirely sure what it meant but he liked the feeling, hard as a rock and hot as Hell in the heart. They had talked to a Tamaranean princess on Okaara and then but an eyeblink later they were here.

Lobo looked around him and huffed, slightly, lighting his cigar with his boot. His....colleague looked around with a grin that suddenly went from disturbing to horribly akin to that of the Joker.

She cricked her neck, the sound making Lobo wince, slightly.

"So...uh...how we doin' this? I know we're splittin' the reward fifty-fifty but the rest...."

She turned to him, and spoke in that voice that made him keep trying to chase her (and he'd lost hands, an arm, once an arm and a leg but he grew them all back and faster each time).

_**We will go there together, and we will give the....team...a set of greetings in our style. All we need to do is grab and git with the girl but let's be real here. We like fighting.** _

Her gaze turned to a tower that was visible in the distance with its flat top reflecting the sunlight in a brilliant fashion.

_**And I owe these self-proclaimed Titans.......and I intend fully to collect on that.** _

With that she strode boldly into the city, clad in her golden armor.

As she walked, she saw her love's old favorite cafe and two women talking, one of whom was stouter and darker-haired, the other blonde threaded with a silvery white. She heard them talking and dismissed them as beneath her notice, hand on her sword, as Lobo whistled for his own part, though his eyes gazed in a manner akin to that of a well-trained soldier and the precision in his steps belied the image (for the Main Man found it was much more scary to seem a complete idiot and then turn out to be smarter than to reveal the rest, and well, he had a reputation to keep).

\--------

A few hundred feet away from them, the Titans were relaxing on Jump City's beach, their uniforms concealed in a new kind of outfit provided by reverse-engineered technology from Daxam. Raven was gone for two years, and their city had known relative peace in some ways and a great set of shifts in another. The Atomic Skull had recently fought and lost yet again, and the team, recovered from the aftermath of the kind of beating someone able to face Superman in a fistfight and regularly live to do it again without visible injury could give, was enjoying a nice relaxing day. Only Donna had tensed when her lasso glowed very brightly, but she had put that aside and was making a point to relax and sunbathe next to Starfire. 

Garfield was single and still despondent, his old other girlfriend, Jillian, deciding she wanted to be monogamous with another (though they remained friends). He was the one who was most morose and sunning himself in the form of a big green dire wolf, content to just enjoy the day.

Conner and his boyfriend Tim for their own parts were enjoying the day to cuddle, Tim Drake having a rare time off from patrolling Gotham when the Dark Knight had taken a few others of the Batfamily with him to help the Green Arrow on one of the few times when Deathstroke the Terminator decided to attack someone who wasn't affiliated with the Titans.

Victor Stone and his girlfriend Sarah were playing volleyball, the only ones not sunning themselves, and Vic was enjoying the chance to show that his mechanical hands could move with as much delicacy and lack of destruction as anything else. For her part Sarah both got admiring glances from beachgoers and flaunted a ring, a step taken with great thought by both of them, after their relationship had entered a new urgency after the encounter with the entity called Death and Raven's disappearance. The quite literal brush with mortality itself given a will and a voice meant that life had become more intense, not less, and moments more vivid in a way that made great emotional sense but where none of the team quite knew how to say why even if the reasons were far from obscure.

Nightwing was talking quietly to Wally, both of them reflecting on the changes in the wake of what they'd all come to term the Incident. Wally and his now-fiancee Iris were engaged for the same reasons that Vic and Sarah Simms were, and Iris was content to be pregnant and engaged and to be married after she'd had the twins.

Fatherhood had sobered the new Flash, who had taken the name even if before he'd expected, as Barry gave him his blessing to do so.

Two years and the sense of first a slow dawning awareness of just what kinds of entities had taken them in as pawns, things far more terrifying than the demon Trigon, or Brother Blood. Two years of a friend dying and yet not truly dead, and of just what kind of impulses roiled in the heart of someone they'd seen as cold and insofar as they thought about her at all in that way, as asexual. Two years since a very strange day had proven to be something incomprehensible and a strangely warm and sad entity of unimaginable beauty had revealed herself deeply involved in their lives and then left in that rage.

Two years since the second attempt at the destruction of not just their Earth, or their universe, but all of the fifty-one by the same entity.

That awareness, not just of the Fifty-One great worlds but of the Hypertime that fountained off of them in a kind of curious quantum stream that fit no true understanding of physics or multiverse theory and yet was established fact, had but begun to ripple around the world in the lapse since the self-proclaimed Goddess Azar had fallen on that multiverse twice.

The discovery of a version of the quantum theory meant that the concepts of free will and predestination, instead of being more academic concerns had become far more general and real, new movements of nihilists arising to argue that a quantum system meant that there was no such thing as good or evil, and no actions with a purpose in an uncaring and infinite existence.

The Golden Heath in the desert of North Africa and parts of Gotham produced monsters, things infected by the so-called Goddess, with eyes that burned like Suns. Even the Batman, notoriously fearful of allowing superpowered heroes into Gotham lest they introduce an arms race and the kind of casual nonchalance about the latest alien invasion or extradimensional horror in Metropolis into a city barely able to handle feral serial killers and robbers with gimmicks (and Pamela Isley, who was a wholly separate category entirely) changed his mind and immediately called in the League for aid whenever the Infected reared their heads.

Worlds met on a regular basis now, and there was a curious oddity that was noticed, though none were quite sure what to make of it. The person of Kara Zor-L, the Last Daughter of Krypton of Earth-2 as Power Girl was one familiar to that Earth....and then they met another Kara Zor-L with longer hair and an outfit that covered her legs, lacked the boob window, and had high blue boots. There was a dissonant element here and a strange familiarity with the two and it was that, in a roundabout way, that was the result of that sotto voce conversation, Dick trying to tease Wally about which Power Girl he thought was hotter, Wally throwing sand at him eventually when he finally had enough.

The day was blessedly relaxed....until their Titans Comms chirped at the same time and they jolted, and looked first with confusion and then with a sudden pale emotion at each other.

It was Garfield who asked the question on all their minds. "Lobo? And her? Why are they here?"

Two minutes later a fully suited up Titans team arrived in downtown Jump City where Lobo was spinning a very expensive-looking limo on his finger like a basketball and then gave them his version of a 'winning smile.'

"Well howdy, if it ain't my mark. My buddy and I, we got a job to do."

Then the entity that they had last seen and paid true attention to when another had left her in the dirt with the breastplate of her armor split down the middle turned to them and smiled, her eyes blazing with a furious heat that left heat distortion around her, their breathing becoming a thing of fits and starts.

 _ **Hello, princess.**_ Her eyes turned to Starfire. _**Your sister sent us. She wants you.**_

Starfire's eyes blazed with righteous fury. "You and she can go to Hell."

Yeneli grinned, that same Joker-ish smile as she drew her blade from its scabbard, running her other hand along its runes with almost a lover's caress.

_**I'm from Muspelheim princess, Hell is too cold.** _

Then she raised the blade above her head and the fires began to ripple up from it as Lobo grinned in turn and then threw the car straight at the other Titans. Grab 'n git against a bunch of sidekicks who weren't even worth being part-timers in the Justice League. How card could it be?

\-----------

_**Starbucks, Prime Earth:** _

Sexton smirked as he turned to Didi, moving his mask carefully from his face. 

"You don't really need a mask, do you? Since you are who you really are?"

Didi's lip quirked very slightly and she nodded as she took a cautious draught of her cider.

"True. I can't die, nor get sick. One of the many things that make my family.....only loosely like mortals."

Sexton nodded, and the two went to a bench not so far away.

They drank their drinks for a time, and Didi found herself enjoying the simple moment of company. Part of her wondered if _this_ was what Dream felt with Hob Gadling, but she shook her head imperceptibly. Dream was always too complex for something that simple even when he tried not to be. Part of her found herself deeply disturbed that she did not miss her family more than she did, given even Destruction, well, after the whole time when Dream had gone with Del to find him and Del and Dream had done so, now spoke to the family more.

He was in their lives, though not of them, and even if he had no intention to retake his function. The moment of thought was not lost on Sexton, who looked at her curiously.

"When I knew you last you were the happiest, very annoyingly so, person I ever met. You made a fucking New York cab driver like you and that's near impossible."

Didi nodded, her reverie broken as she looked at him.

He was...concerned, and part of her felt curious, even skeptical.

"Are you worried about me or worried that my function would break down again?"

Sexton's lip quirked slightly.

"Well everyone looks about five years younger than they actually are, so my vanity, at least, wouldn't be worried. And I got to see my kids as kids for five years longer."

"You have kids?"

He nodded enthusiastically and she listened for a half-hour as Sexton waxed on about his kids. He'd even mentioned learning when one of his own kids expressed suicidal ideation that a very dangerous kind of depression ran in the family and they had gotten treatment for it. Part of her wondered a bit about how Raven was adjusting to her job and other things she had tried to make herself forget since she'd left.

Drowning her sorrows in sex, that did not work. Nor did the....other things...she had tried.

Yet she listened all the same and when he was done rambling she set a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I knew you'd make a good father, Sexton."

Sexton snorted. "My dad didn't."

Didi shrugged. "That sometimes makes it easier, just by not doing what the other person did."

He was thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.

Then he asked her a question that further surprised her at one level though it shouldn't have, after a pleasant lapse of silence. She had seen a copy of the _Times_ with an image of that world's Raven and a story mentioned about the 'Devil's daughter busting a cult'. He had seen the way she reacted and he turned to the paper, and picked it up.

He held it up toward her. "You.... _know_ her?"

She sighed, biting her lip.

"I know everyone, Sexton."

"I know, you're Death. You know what I mean."

She chewed on her lower lip,

"Yes, I know a.....version of her from another universe. Earth-48 to be precise."

Silence stretched, this time more awkward. "Like friend knowing or like Hazel and Fox?"

"......"

"Like Hazel and Fox," she said softly.

"Oh. So Death is....what, gay?"

"Loosely...yes. I prefer women." Her smile became slightly roguish. "There's a reason for that Death and the maiden trope, you know."

He laughed in turn, before asking her "Do you want to talk about it?"

She stared into space for a time, then looked at her feet, which kicked.

"If you don't, I understand." 

She turned to him, taking a deeper breath. "No, it's OK."

Then, within limits she began to tell him the story, beginning with the first onslaught of the entity from the Omniverse, and from there to how she'd found herself drawn into things with Raven, and what followed. It was a slow and hesitant process, Death feeling the hot fires of shame at points and due to them sometimes just...pausing. Sexton listened as patiently to her as she had to him. In truth it helped to piece sequences together, even if her knuckles clenched and her eyes flashed (and Sexton knew it was not a metaphor when he thought he'd seen this) at seeing how her older brother had manipulated her. She kept several things to herself, within appropriate boundaries of a conversation, yet as Sexton listened she noticed him moving from relaxed to stiff, even worried.

It took her about half the time it took him to tell her about his kids to tell him the story, and when it was done, he placed his own hand on her shoulder.

"You know running away doesn't actually solve problems, right? You kind of showed me that when I was a kid."

She nodded.

"Neither would keeping my power and the state of rage I was in. There are.....beings that do something like what I do in other multiverses. One is....unpleasant, very much so. And rather than become like her even for a time when angry, and rather than condemn all of this"-she waved her arm-"to more of what happened when I quit, I gave my substitute the task of being me."

From her right pocket on her hip she drew a silver ankh that led Sexton's eyes to widen.

"I still have this. All I have to do is put it around my neck and I am fully what I still am....just not actually exercising it."

She smiled softly. "I have been a concept for a long time, Sexton. A very.......very long time. So are all my family. Unlike them I don't.....I can't perform my own function on myself. I am immortal enough that even a virus from another dimension that wanted a deathless world could not kill me, even if she made a very good try at it. Nor could a being that did kill my sister, and wrote herself into a pattern that has repeated itself in every time and timeline since."

She laughed softly. "I know it's coming, and I know the patterns here, but I cannot break them. It's my own Hell to take my sister's hand and to know that on paper I could try to avoid it, and I have. I tried and have tried to spare my family their own demons but they always find a way to them, in the end. If she does not kill her at that time it happens at another."

She put her head in her hands for a moment. "So when I have the opportunity to try to remember who I am or what I can be without my function..."

He looked to her understandingly. "I get it."

Her look was skeptical, almost withering.

"No really, I get it. Your family expects one thing, you're another, and life isn't something that works well. You live what's a Groundhog Day like life, admittedly better looking than Bill Murray"-Death snorted and then actually let a single sharp bark of laughter escape-"So you want another way out, and then you try to take it and that doesn't work either. It's....funny. You're not just Death here, you're Death in every single world. All those Hypertime places, too. You can do all of that but here you don't sound like a Reaper, you sound like well...like one of us."

Death laughed, the sound almost wanting to turn into a sob. "That's just it. I've been this too _long._ I've seen every single possibility for my family, been through so many things and my life is just.....I take all of my family and at the end of every take on Existence as it is here, it comes down to Destiny and to me, in an endless darkness, before I step from it into the broader state of things until existence here restores itself. My parents, the Presence you call God, my siblings, they end up the last but they end. And I don't. I just......" she sighed.

"I have been this concept and myself for so long that I don't know what to do. I can't die, and I don't want to." She looked at her hands quietly for a moment. "It's not a case like that of the virus, of longing for my function and being unable to have it. I like life, even if it has its deep sorrows and the price to live it. I don't want to die, I want to live a life that isn't a continual set of patterns locked into each other, knowing how things are going to unfold and being powerless to stop them. I don't want Dream to suffer, I don't want Despair to die, I don't want Delight to become Delirium. I never wanted Destruction to leave."

She sighed. "I want something to _change_ and I wasn't picky about how I went about doing it."

Sexton nodded in turn, quietly. "Boredom makes people restless and it can make people stupid."

Death bit back a harsh laugh, and then looked at him for a moment, and he realized for the first time in knowing Didi that he saw not the mortal being Death pretended to be but the actual entity, one of the Seven he'd learned about after that day. Her skin had become an unnatural pallor, her eyes a darkness he could have drowned in, her appearance moving from beautiful to an ethereal nature that would remain imprinted and fixed with him even more than it already had (and he had married a woman with a very strong resemblance to her, but that did not and would not occur to him for a long time).

_**It wasn't boredom. It was....frustration. Things I repressed for far too long, and which demanded out. And so out they came. And from them a monster found her way into this portion of existence twice. All of that suffering is on my hands.** _

She clenched her fists. **_And someone I've......I don't know what my feelings to her and to the other one are, but I am close to them, closer than I ever expected, I left her in a lurch of becoming the person with my responsibilities as an act of spite to everyone involved._** ** _Another mess on my hands, and I'll have to make sense of that one._**

Then the moment faded and it was Didi, who pulled her feet onto the bench and wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees. 

He put his hand back on her shoulder and they remained until he got a call from his wife and told Didi he had to go pick up the kids and would be on his way.

Didi remained on the bench, for a time, and then got up and stepped through a portal.

\-----------

The being who was and wasn't Death found herself across tens of thousands of worlds, escorting souls across the divide of what had gone before from what came after. She was everywhere that needed her, there often before the time of her precise function. She spoke to bacteria, to ideas, to mortals of every possible imagination and stripe. This was the being she had claimed and sought under the whim of another to believe she could contain. What was more disturbing to her was that at one remove, due to that involvement of that other she in truth actually had done just that. She had collared and contained the very concept who transcended rules, and it was clear from how this had unfolded that the very fabric of existence had suffered. The power in her hands was awe-inspiring and yet...

She was there when stars passed on, and took their spirits with her. She was there when infants went into her arms and she heard the agonized wails of mothers. She was there when those who sought to end things themselves succeeded, she was there to witness the sheer unimaginable horror of wars on colossal scales of which Earth and its heroes knew nothing. She was there when the old who felt weary of life welcomed her as a friend, even when she strode out of the darkness as the darkness with eyes that glowed like blood and a flowing set of wings that were illuminated with the witch-lights that were her own, less overtly terrifying but impossible to make not so. She strode in the armor she had built to ward herself from the dangers she was in, and yet to them she was a soothing balm as she learned to wield her powers in a way Azar herself would have approved of.

Not the strutting and then feral virus that had masqueraded by the name, the old woman with white hair who had mentored her and raised her.

What would Azar make of her now? Now 'ascended' for a time (she hoped a very short time for her head ached at multiple levels. An infinity of lifetimes that had a beginning and were yet infinite, iterations on iterations on iterations. The strange room with the tapestries, and those books. In her cloak she held the copies of the ones she was reading still, the later volumes of a series that improbably matched with her memories, if from the perspective of Dream, and not entirely as others of what was and was not her family would have seen it). Now this entity who walked in infinite spaces and did her best to do something that was never hers to do.

The dead raged and the dead welcomed her, yet there were times when they wept.

She came to a child who had fallen from a silly game played at a risk from a great height, and the child looked to her and wept.

"Was that it? Is that all I get?"

And she knelt down, and put armored arms around her, and let her cry on her pauldron.

She was sure her counterpart would have had words of wisdom but all she said was:

 _ **I'm sorry,**_ over and over again, and then picked the child up at her side, and as they walked to the Sunless Lands she told her stories, carefully edited, about a girl born of evil's fire, who met friends and had magical adventures with them, and as they arrived within the vast realm that she knew the scale thereof and just what Death did here and how she did it, the tears and sorrow had become warmth and they hugged again a second time and then there was mist and cold.

She stood for a moment with her hands hugging someone who wasn't there and then hugged herself, sinking to her knees, and crying. She met everyone twice and she was alone, deeply and profoundly alone, in the way that the girl haunted by a terrible fate in the old Tower would have found terrifying. She remained there for a while as others of her accompanied other souls and felt their partings.

And then she stood up, in a sudden and painful spike of fear. Her function was calling in her own city for the first time since her change, on a world that she had heard of, and heard things as bad as that of Apokolips. A world where there was an old enemy, and the last thing she wanted was to run near someone like Blackfire like this, where she could see her. Yet the pull could not be denied, and she found herself called to the distant and terrible citadel-world of Okaara.


	4. Warlords of Vega:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death comes to Okaara as a Goddess erupts from her prison. 
> 
> Titans and Bounty Hunters clash in Jump City. 
> 
> Death of the Endless goes to speak to her mother.

THE IRON CHAMBER, OKAARA: 

It was one of the three great secrets of Vega, this unhallowed place. Two monsters had been laid to rest here, one a tragic being changed like his mother and both her herald and her nemesis. The other the goddess of Tamaran, once of their kind and now ascended to become something _other._ Auron, her son, had been changed with her when the great transformation had arrived, in a distant byblow of the Godwave that had created the New Gods of the Fourth World. He was a kind and a gentle soul and what was good had become greater. X'Hal was a Tamaranean, of a proud and warlike species who gloried in war and bloodshed and horror, with Koriand'r among the least so of a kind to whom Komand'r was far more truthful to their spirit than she.

What was good and kind in the spirit of Koriand'r had become moreso, and it was he who had given warnings for the soldiers in their armor wielding various staves and tridents and esoteric weaponry to flee. They were soldiers, trained by the most capable warlords in a galaxy full of them, the kind who had driven off foes that troubled even the Guardians of Oa with minimal losses on a regular basis. They did not hesitate to do their duty when the fraying fetters that had held a great chamber where a monster had been given rest finally erupted outward in a spray of molten shrapnel.

An entity levitated, a bright and shining being of jagged angles and brilliant fire-like aspects to them.

To the being that was and wasn't Death, the entity seemed like a more brilliantly glowing distant kindred of Starfire and Blackfire, save that her hair was as molten flame and that her body was composed of hard light. She oozed power and devastation, and a menace no less potentially capable than the being she had once called father. He had spoken to her of X'Hal at one point in one of her dreams not long after the body-switch with Starfire, and the secrets that her chosen sister had learned.

Her father's face had oozed malice then as it always did, his sideburns standing out against his face, the tectonic rumble seeming to smother her and to seek to break her by the antisound of his voice.

When the Earth falls, my gem, so shall the rest of the universe. There is a Goddess in the Vegan moons, my daughter. A being who fancies herself my equal. When I have conquered the Earth and then Oa, we shall go to Vega next and then when it falls....you shall have it as a pet.

it was his idea of an offer and she had spurned it and he had laughed, promising her doom would be her gift to the worlds.

And now as the one who held for a time a power bequeathed to her by something other, she was here. She watched the being withstanding deadly weaponry to match the power of Oa or Atlantis, power to crack worlds and to burn mountains and boil oceans. X'Hal laughed, and it was an unhallowed sound, a sound like the crackling of fire or the peal of thunder.

You can't hurt me, so what do your weapons matter?

The intensity increased and then she was among them, taking the first of the creatures, a vast and stout gorilla-like thing that was kindred to the fallen warlord Damyn and lifting him by the throat.

An ugly breed matching an ugly soul, X'Hal cackled and then her first blazed out and the creature made a single shriek that was choked off and fell, the reeking odor of burned flesh.

The entity turned to see a woman clad in armor with pale skin and reddish eyes, shadows that gleamed with eyes of similar color and echoed with demonic snarls behind her.

"Not yet, please," it begged. "I had so much more to do."

 _ **I am sorry**_ , the entity spoke. _**You had a lifetime, no more and no less, like all that is or will ever be**_. A sound of beating wings and he was gone.

Another entity, and his twin, two sons of Tamaran, of her own world.

Yet they were trained to fight her and they knew as did their mistress Komand'r what the deeper truth behind Tamaran's religion was. X'Hal was no kind and loving goddess but a vengeful and murderous entity akin to that of the demon Trigon the Terrible, that which had imprisoned the world in stone and left them to be haunted by nightmares of their worst demons and of his devising. Trigon was ancient, even the wrath of one of the Endless that he had stirred had not truly destroyed him, only dispersed his essences until they had reformed and then brought forth three sons and a Daughter.

X'Hal had been imprisoned in the one and only time that the Guardians of Oa had been given sanction to intervene within Vega, for it had taken not merely the Lanterns but the Guardians themselves and the technology of Oa to devise a prison in a distant past when Tamaran had been a new civilization barely out of the days when its ancestors had been beasts that talked. That was now over a hundred thousand years distant and devices from a prior age had yielded at last to the decay and the will of time. They looked at their goddess and she was not the lovely and soothing being of light to whom they offered prayer, she was a hovering and laughing entity of gleaming light that snarled at them: 

_**Kneel, my children, and I shall grant you great rewards.** _

Childhood training and the religion they worshiped in and knew told them to kneel. Duty and what they had just seen her do said to do what they chose to do and to unleash firepower, both weaponry and starbolts.

X'Hal sighed.

 _ **Pathetic**_ , she hissed.

She raised her hands as they glowed more brightly.

_**Your kind have limited yourself here when you have my blessings. You see starbolts as a thing of power, and of respect. They are but shadows of me. Let me show you the sun, not the fire that casts shadows on the cave wall.** _

Light blazed out and the Tamaraneans were disintegrated where they stood, their weapons exploding with a thunderous boom that knocked back the remaining soldiers.

The two Tamaraneans were puzzled at first to see a being who blended aspects of the Eternal who embodied the concept of the End of All Things and their princess's comrade in arms. Tall and clad in armor dark as night, hair long and dark as the armor, with eyes that glowed with a firelike red hue, she spoke to them and they bowed as warriors with honor. A beating of wings and there was nothing.

X'Hal paused at one point as she burned two more of the species that had made the creature Damyn and a kin to the multi-tentacled beast that lived on another of the seventy worlds. She was doing this slowly, for they deserved to suffer as they all would. Keep her prisoner? Her whose power was lesser only than the Spectre or the Demon Trigon? Vega would burn and then the Galaxy would tremble in her name.

She saw the entity that stood by them waiting to receive their souls, the thing that had flitted in and out of her sight.

 ** _Lady of Endings,_** she began, until her eyes narrowed.

**_Wait....you are not her, are you? You're someone, some_ ** **thing _else. One of the wretched brood of the Demon._**

**_Why are you here?_ **

The being said nothing and took the souls with her and X'Hal snarled. 

_**I am a Goddess, little mock-Endless. You will treat me as one!** _

There was no words from that entity, X'Hal snarling in turn and then casting a rune on the room. The Endless were mighty, and one could not bind a concept, but one could entrap a portion of one that left itself so incautious in front of one who despised it.

This being had connection to her people somehow, to the time of stone when for three days and three nights she alone was one of the few beings among the Living.

And it was here. She would not go back, and there were questions to ask.

JUMP CITY:

"I hate Lobo," groaned Cyborg as he picked himself up from a punch that had left knuckles cratered in his armor.

"Tell me about it," grunted Superboy as he had picked up where Victor Stone had left off, trading a set of blows with a laughing Czarnian who was having the time of his life. The rest of the Titans were staying carefully out of range of the sword wielded by the _other_ hunter and seeking to evacuate civilians in a wider range, the entity uncaring of how many people could die or would die, nor the effects of creating areas of molten metal where she moved. She was fast, too, far faster than they expected. Next to a Kryptonian or Wally West (or even a half-Kryptonian like Kon-El) she was slow, but next to anything else....

Changeling flew away from a trailing arc of fire, then shifted into the shape of an ankylosaur, dropping on the monster and causing her to stumble forward from the sheer impact. He groaned in pain and found himself passing out with burns on his back from the impact as the creature grinned only to find herself facing Donna Troy. 

_**Your sister fought me, little Amazon,**_ she said as she loomed over her, raising her sword. _**She's killed a great many monsters, some bigger than I. She didn't kill me.**_

Donna just smiled and then shoulder-checked the giant, which stumbled back from the impact and then whirled around to deliver a roundhouse kick that knocked her further back, trailing molten asphalt as her feet dug into the ground.

The thing chuckled.

 _ **It took a being from beyond our multiverse to knock me down and to knock me out, little creature. You're not one of**_ **them _and they do not care when their own kind are not involved._**

She moved with her own speed as Donna raised a shield of Themyscira, one that she'd unstrapped from her back and held against the blade, the ensuing explosion knocking even Lobo and Superboy around. Her head rang and she could feel blood trickling from her ears, yet the shield was undamaged, even by a light singe, For her own part the monster that had brought the sword against her had her own head on her own face, shaking her ears. 

_**That smarted,**_ she grunted as Starfire swooped in, firing a set of powerful starbolts straight at her back. The entity growled and then prepared to lunge for her only to have her hand grasped in Donna's lasso, as she turned her head back.

_**Gonna make me tell the truth, daughter of Hippolyta?** _

"Something like that."

The lasso gleamed with a powerful energy and as the Jotunn sought to move up and the lasso to strive against this, the ground cracked, and then cracked again, fractures spreading up buildings. The entity snarled and then jerked her arm to try to test her will against the Amazon, and both were held in a stalemate as Lobo got up, finally, and lunged at Superboy, whose head was still ringing from the impact and slammed his fist into his head hard enough to knock him out.

"Two down," he shouted. "Four to go!"

The Jotunn nodded and as she remained locked in the trial of wills with the Amazon, she saw what the Amazon was seeking to hold her in place for. A blurring blaze of lightning running at her, empowered by both the Speed Force and an elementary rule of physics.

She snarled:

 ** _Come on then,_** and as Donna pulled her forward Wally West's fist collided into her face with a thunderous impact, Donna finally letting go with the lasso as she took her sword arm and unleashed a sudden column of flame in the direction the Flash ran.

She snarled in distaste when he not only outran the flames but did so on the side of a building, and then watched as Nightwing found himself caught with Victor Stone in trying to fend off Lobo's brand of devil may care 'humor' and found herself in turn facing their quarry.

"Why are you doing this? Your girlfriend is not here. Mine isn't either."

The creature smiled.

_**Not here for the demoness or to merely pick up our old feud. That is just an....extra bonus of this particular task. No, child, I'm here for you.** _

Starfire's eyes blazed with righteous fury.

"On whose behalf?"

_**Your sister's, of course. Whose else? She says to tell you something that only you would recognize.** _

_**X'Hal is breaking loose from her prison, and Tamaran risks burning in the wrath of that which it worshiped.** _

Starfire paused.

"The wards on Okaara are...."

**_I don't know anything beyond that and I don't care. This is just the bonus of getting to avenge my humiliations in front of your team by kicking the shit out of it._ **

Donna moved toward her again and this time the Jotunn was familiar enough with her approach to move past her fist and then launch a sudden piledriver strike straight into her stomach, causing her to curl up and fall to the ground.

She took three blows from the Speedster and dismissed this, there was no means to realistically fight the Speed Force without potentially destroying her quarry and if she did that she wouldn't get paid, so she told her self three more times when he added three more blows to it.

Starfire looked, indecisive. Kon-El had just gotten up and drawn Lobo's attention again and Donna's winded pain was looking like it was ebbing too. And yet parts of Jump City's streets had melted, again, and the damage that would only escalate, on the ways her team was clearly tired and only those with the strongest healing and endurance were able to keep coming back for more, on the sight of an unconscious and burned Gar and a Dick who'd hit a car a bit too hard from Lobo and she made a decision that she knew her team would object to, but which she felt was the right one.

"Very well, I will go see my sister."

The Jotunn seemed disappointed (and in that Starfire knew she'd done the right thing) but grudgingly nodded.

_**Princess says she'll go with us. We're done here.** _

The Main Man snorted.

"Aww and I didn't even get to give 'em some hands yet."

His partner rolled her eyes and then they were all teleported up to the ship, leaving her team staring in worry and discontent.

It took them about seven hours to heal given various Themysciran poultices in the absence of their dearly missed friend, and then they were in a carefully designed secret thing, a gift of Starfire's. A ship of Tamaran that would take them to the distant system of Vega. It was the second time that they would go to Starfire's home system, and as they entered in the co-ordinates for Okaara, they were uncertain and unknowing of what fate awaited them there.

REALM OF NIGHT:

She had been the first of her siblings booted out of the realm of her parents in her first life, thirteen thousand, three hundred and sixty two universes ago. The Time and Night here were not the ones that had first birthed her yet in each universe they changed least, for the concept of Night, the endless Void that was the backdrop and the nature to Existence, as Time were too fundamental not to, in all their forms. Of all the siblings of the Endless she was the one most estranged from her parents, and it would always be so. They did not like the concept that they were not truly eternal or that they had made a being that had outlived them and continued to do so.

It would have taken a truly desperate circumstance to make Death even consider bridging this gap or to acknowledge that she had a mother at all.

And yet, she mused, desperate was precisely what these circumstances were. Part of her was entrapped in one multiverse in a self-destructive spiral thanks to the machinations of Thanos of Titan. And part of her, this part of her, was entrapped in the same set of poor decisions taken from the same root but with a different local manifestation. 

Her counterpart in the other multiverse had chosen to speak to her father instead, but she had come here, to the outer edges of this realm.

Thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty two universes' worth of a brief time of distant and unloving parents who cast her out before even her elder brother, even Delirium whom both neglected had seen more of them than she had.

She remained indecisive on the outer edges. It had been lovely to speak to Sexton again, and yet......

She loved her family, she truly did. Even Destiny, who in his own way had been given a gift that he had not used well for how could one so defined by duty handle its absence otherwise? Resenting him was an indulgence she seldom allowed and yet.....

Still she remained. It was an indulgence that had seen her taunted with what she in truth secretly had to finally admit she actually wanted, and was willing to take only to have it yanked away from her. It manipulated a person haunted by her own birth into partially creating the kind of circumstances that went into it, though her actions were not of herself when she did. She loved everyone, she couldn't not do so. Yet love did not mean becoming a passive doormat and simply tolerating things that were intolerable.

She stood at the gates of the realm of Night, arms crossed across her chest, rocking herself slightly.

Then she heard a voice that spoke, as a being of deep grey skin strode out, clad in her usual beautiful dress.

 **Sister,** spoke Dusk. **You are at mother's gates. You have not been here.......a very long time.**

Death stared at her, a partially conscious hostility flooding her gaze.

_**I am not here for good reasons.** _

A voice echoed as a being strode to her own gates. Seldom did Death interact with beings of more native true power than her own, for in all creation the list was her elder brother, her father and her mother, and the Presence/Source and his eldest sons, the twins Lucifer and Michael. She was not afraid of them, for she had taken them time and time and time again until it blurred. She had no particular reasons to seek them, for hers was not a way of power, but of infinity upon infinity until she felt like she would break under its weight.

One such being was before her, Night herself. Her mother, after a fashion.

 **Daughter,** she said with a voice that showed surprise and confusion. **You are here to speak to me.**

She nodded, a single stiff nod, and bit her lip. Her mother had literally physically hurled her from this place in that first reality and in all the ones that followed, she was unwanted and unloved and rej-as she bit her lip harder when a tear streaked down her cheek, her body shivering with fear and with emotions that too were buried. 

**Come in,** her mother said, and the kindness in that voice nearly broke Death as she heard something she had ached to hear and let herself follow.

Night's face was apathetic, and yet Dusk saw in her eyes something she had seen the day she had made that decision.

Uncertainty, and regret.

CITADEL SHIP, OUTSKIRTS OF OKAARA:

"She has awoken, then," the Psion spoke, quietly.

"She has, yes."

"Our greatest folly, and one we can no more contain now than we can then."

"Yes."

"And she will come for us and for our people next, too."

"Again, yes, why repeat what you have said a dozen times already, and what we already know? Repetition will not alter reality nor make it kinder."

"Because I have sensed another presence on that world, one drawn by other means."

The other Psion snorted with contempt. "You and your _sorcery._ " The entity smiled. "Oh rest assured, this is not like what happened when I sought to trap the Prodigal."

He pointed to a being that materialized in and out of existence in linkage with the energies produced by the deaths that X'Hal made.

"That is not one of _them,_ the seven primordial concepts that underpin reality. It has another signature, instead. Do you recall the day of stone?"

The other Psion stopped for a moment, the next words of mockery choked off into a sudden silence. "Yes."

"Well we have the architect of that day here, and we owe her vengeance for our humbling." 

The Psions smiled and it was an unkind smile.

Only the skeptic asked quietly: "Your plan would work if it were the daughter of Trigon. What we see there is neither the Endless nor the Daughter of Darkness. Will what would work on one work on a thing that is both and neither?"

The other Psion hissed: "I care not. Vengeance will not be denied, and the monster will keep Okaara busy enough that they will not stop us and we will not risk the Okaaran peace to attack this world."


	5. The Battle of Okaara Part I:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War comes to Okaara as a Goddess rages and seeks her freedom. 
> 
> The Titans encounter an ancient force of stark menace and are rescued by an unlikely team and a still more unlikely deliverer. 
> 
> Two estranged sisters stand at a precipice. 
> 
> Death and her mother have a long talk.

LOWER LEVELS OF THE CITADEL OF OKAARA:

The thing that was and wasn't Raven looked at X'Hal with a gaze that reflected initial anger that faded into disinterest.

**_I know who you are, and what you are. I knew of the stories of your father the accursed. And now I have you, this abomination that blends things that were never meant to be yoked here. I am now mistress of all life and of Death herself!_ **

The being that was and wasn't Death looked at her with disinterest turning into amusement and raised her right hand.

_**It is true, I am she of whom the prophecy was spoken:** _

_**The Gem was born of evil's fire,** _

_**The Gem shall be his portal.** _

_**He comes to claim, he comes to sire,** _

_**The end of all things mortal!** _

Her other hand tapped against her breastplate, the ankh gleaming.

_**For a time being I have indeed become the end of all things mortal which the deceased Trigon of the Eighth Circle sired. Where the sphere of life is concerned I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, who holds the keys of Hades....and of my function.** _

_**But I am still his daughter for all that, and in that union I am still one trained for this kind of thing.** _

Her right hand clenched and blackened fire burned out the wards as X'Hal glared, her wrath incandescent.

Blackfire looked at her with a sudden dawning horror.

"Raven? What happened to you?"

She turned, looking coldly.

_**Love.** _

Was all she said before a vast dome of fire erupted into the battlefield, X'Hal's wrath stilled for a moment. The dome displaced, revealing three beings. Raven's eyes widened and then went to four as she became a vast and towering giant oozing the power of her demonic nature, seeing one of the women she loved in the hands of a being whose nature flooded her altered memory. Love that had become a sudden wrenching stab with a burning blade and a fevered unconsciousness leavened with voices of a departed aeon, hatred and suspicion of an entity that had promised death to a being whose blended nature made the threat much more personal. 

She did not see her at first, though the other one, the hulking Czarnian with a massive Gatling gun he'd acquired on a prior trip that had conveniently materialized in his hands by a process that he had not understood, not at first (on his throne a being clad in white with eyes of endless night skies smirked slightly) held in his right hand, bandoliers of ammunition wrapping his body, chomping on a cigar. His counterpart dropped Starfire at her sister's feet and it was then that she looked around, smelling and seeing what he'd seen instantly.

 _ **Lobo,**_ her voice was uncertain. _**Is Okaara supposed to look and smell like this?**_

"No, darlin', it ain't."

He pulled up his gun as she turned to notice at last the Goddess, whose ranting and confrontation with a being she saw out of the periphery of her eye and stubbornly elected to ignore the existence thereof,

 _ **That girl.....**_ the Goddess spoke. _**She is the sister. One of the two who held me captive who escaped to the tender mercies of the ones who uplifted me.**_

She saw a shining being of light form a murderous smile. **_Now she burns._**

Yeneli coughed. **_No, see, I can't let you do that. My colleague and I, we only get paid if she's alive._**

The monster ignored her, her hands sparking with light, and Yeneli's pride, never well-contained, sparked the more brilliantly as she caught in this being a glimpse of that which her kind were to wage war upon in the time of ending, a being like a Ljossalfar except far more murderous and treacherous. 

X'Hal roared with a delighted eldritch screech of triumph and then light blazed out only for the daughter of Trigon who either was an Endless or possessed one or (and at that point X'Hal refused to speculate, her mind could not endure such things and she would not torment herself thereby) to stand in front of Starfire and Blackfire, even as she made a low sound somewhere between a groan and the eldritch demonic growl and there was a smell of scorching flesh. 

_**Get her out. Now.** _

Her face looked at Blackfire even as she hadn't moved at all.

Her left hand moved and then a sudden blast of energy shattered the wall.   
  
_**NOW!** _

Blackfire moved and took her sister with her, her sister staring mutely at Raven until she realized exactly who she saw and by the time she tried to get out of her sister's grasp and move toward her, Blackfire winced and closed her eyes and then with a single sharp thump her sister was mercifully silent as she flew slowly, feeling time beginning to tilt.

The daughter of Trigon smiled when she saw the armies of Okaara arrived, their muster moving quickly and weapons zeroed in and ready to fire.

_**Too slow, X'Hal.** _

The Goddess grinned.

_**Indeed, Trigon's bastard.** _

And then her hands gleamed and time itself began to run amock, as the Jotunness's sword blazed into flames and with a great roar she lunged at X'Hal, who caught her blades with her hands. Time slowed in some areas and sped up in others, and in the case of the warriors of Okaara it froze them in place and their weapons mid-blast. She was displeased and then fearful to see that the daughter of Trigon was not slowed and that the burns on her body had healed, and what's more, she was back to gigantic size and more of a towering entity of shadows with burning red eyes.

Shadows of eyes and snarling mouths erupted outward and met walls of flames and X'Hal roared again in pleasure. A battle against a true equal. This was....glorious!

PSION FLAGSHIP:

They had been in orbit keeping an eye on the fighting when they saw the time-distortion moving toward them with that unnatural fluid grace that was the most beautiful and horrifying sight they had ever seen.

The captain turned from the transmissions sent and then spoke with a booming voice:

"We are entered in the Citadel's ranks of the honored dead. Activate the Eschaton Protocols. We reap the reward of _her_ embrace rather than continuing to endure this damnation."

The rift hit them with a sledgehammer effect but it only intensified their focus as the protocol activated.

When a starship with a horribly familiar yellow T appeared off the starboard side of the starship, the captain gave a single set of orders. Nine of their number were given the armor and arsenal of a Bloodaxe team, and those obnoxious friends of their former experiment would be taken captive, and allowed to see the ruin made of the monster on this world.

TITANS STARSHIP:

They had arrived seemingly instantaneously, or so they had expected. Seven hours had lapsed to recover before they got in the ship and were able to leave Earth orbit and go so very high up and then jaunt their way here. They had arrived and yet time and space were strange. The strange starship with its symbol of a clenched fist holding something like the Earth symbol of the Fasces had seen them and seemed to quite literally form a turret out of smooth metal and fired something at their ship. Now they had power only in the bridge, and there were aliens that had teleported on the ship.

Had they seen them fully they would have seen nine Psions, one of whom was a swollen monstrosity akin to what the Phantom Zone and lobotomy had done to the Kryptonian scientist Non, a hulking thing of genetic engineering that would have made the figures of a tabletop game Gar Logan had recently discovered and started bugging his friends proud by proportions. Most were much smaller and skinnier, and even the brute shared with the rest a strange kind of armor, in parts lithe and more like a catsuit than a more traditional armor and in other places thickly plated with turrets and arcane work of Citadel science that allowed for weaponry to generate its own ammunition and to do so indefinitely, if with a hidden price that meant that any team deemed Team Bloodaxe would be the architect of its own demise so long as its objective was fulfilled.

They knew of the Titans, well more precisely they knew of three Titans. The prisoner who'd escaped the Gordanians, the half-human Kryptonian clone sired in what was the strangest kind of homosexual hate-mance story they'd ever heard, and the thing that created the Day of Stone. To have them appear off their ship meant that they would be questioned and....modified. Togetherness, in a sense, with their escaped prisoner. At least that was the plan. The time-distortion meant it took too long and no time at all to reach the bridge and they immediately fired without bothering to announce their presence.

The fight that followed was the strangest in both their lives, things that would have been fatal otherwise pulled and rendered harmless, delayed shouts of anger and pain from Kon and Donna when the technology of the Psions burned them. Vic's cannons misfiring as in the time-distortion sonic waves could not form and his profane tirade cut off with extra frustration and a vein popping on his head. Wally could not even move, nor could Dick, and in the strangeness they at least had the satisfaction that a hulking thing partially glimpsed stopped his face with Kon's fist and fell backward like the oversized lump of reptile flesh he was, and then everything changed as time resumed its normal pace and Donna and Kon both finished their yelling and Vic's sonic cannons suddenly erupted with him laughing as he said:   
  
"Motherfucker shit yeah! Burn you sonsobitches! Sam Jackson eat your fucking heart out!"

They did not see the construct moving them out of range until they found themselves suddenly closer and everyone's eyes turned to Gar, who as usual was was the calmest of them all, in most ways, save that his mouth was genuinely open with shock. When they collectively turned and saw what, no....who...had done this, they understood immediately.

OMEGA MEN FLAGSHIP, _ALPHA,_ a few minutes earlier: 

The Omega Men, Primus, Tigorr, Ekta and Vaktu (the two Gordanians who were staring warily at the being who had moved and drawn them into a green sphere), Zunkzhun, last of the species related to the unlamented Lord Damyn, all stared. Lianna of Oa, and of deeper origin (and in her views her only origin that mattered) Malthus, had joined their team a while back. One of the immortal Guardians, she commanded the power of the entity Ion and not filtered through a battery or a Ring. She was one of the most powerful entities in Existence, outweighed only by the Endless, by the two leaders of the Fourth World's benevolent and malevolent faction, and the Presence and his angels. Since she had joined the team they had never had a person die or be seriously injured, for if shit went pear-shaped she would intervene, and make very short work of it. Injuries were no issue, even the loss of a limb or a body burned to the bone was something readily repaired.

They wondered, not so idly, if this was what it felt like for the heroes of Earth to fight side by side with Superman and Supergirl.

They had never seen Lianna take initiative until she had brought them here, and then cloaked the ship with her powers. When the time-distortion effect hit everything around them moved in strange fashions, either too quickly or too slow. They retained a sense of normal time. When the other ship appeared and the fight began, they watched her and stayed quiet as she shielded them and then vanished in a sudden eruption of green light.

Tigorr clicked his fangs.

"Now that," he spoke with his booming voice so akin to his distant cousin, Tawny, who worked with that insufferable son of a bitch from the Rock of Eternity, "that is truly terrifying."

TITANS STARSHIP:

The Titans had only thought things had been weird when they appeared in the time-bubble and the half-glimpsed images of the Psion Squad that had attacked them had appeared. When time resumed its normal course and the team found itself now facing very angry Kryptonians and Amazons (and that what held up to single blows whose strength was sapped by time oddities did not hold up at all to multiple blows at normal speed) it was the rest of the team that paused to notice the bright green energy that manifested and then drew the Kryptonian and the Amazon behind a strange construct.

They had met Green Lanterns a few times, even seen their great Rings in action. They had never seen an Oan before, nor did they truly grasp what it was that they saw. The small woman with her hair in a single braid draping down past her shoulders looked with a cold smile on her face.

Psion weaponry was advanced, straddling the lines between Gods and Magic and Machines and Science. Graviton converters, reality-distortion blasts, other things that could be glimpsed and had been seen and had their own punches pulled in turn by the time-distortion were now free to fire, or they would have been had it not been for a sudden flash of green energy and the weapons falling disassembled.

The woman smiled.

**_Our kind made you what you are._ **

The smile became sorrow.

**_We made you monsters because we were arrogant. We cannot unmake what it is that we have made, but we can give you peace from the misery inflicted._ **

Light flashed and there was blood and strangled sounds that made the Titans wince and then there were bodies floating out in the vacuum of space, some regressing to a briefly alive youth and others crumbling to dust, but all subject to the cold reality of the vacuum or caught in clothes that did not change merely because the bodies around them did. The Titans found their ship in an embarkation deck, and then in a brilliant shield of green light the Omega Men cut across X'Hal's mockery of time and space like wind through a light jacket, heading for Okaara, where armies that wielded power to lay low Gods were caught in the collateral damage of a brawl between darkness and light and the boiling rage of a Jotunness who felt old primordial instincts long-suppressed from the time when her kind had waited on Fate to give them the inevitable victory that marked spaces between cycles. Gods at war and yet the power of an Oan cut through it as if it were nothing. 

TWO MILES BEYOND THE BATTLE-ZONE:

Starfire's gaze met Blackfire's and in that gaze Blackfire flinched. She saw herself, as she had been, before.....

In that gaze, she saw still moreso the futility of everything she had done up to this point.

She raised her own hand.

"I know there are no words," she began in the demotic Tamaranean of the streets, Starfire's eyes glowing as she was soon levitating in front of her.

"No, there are none. You sold me into slavery, you used me, you hurt me."

Blackfire winced.

"I....I know. I have no right to expect more than your not tearing my head off."

Starfire remained floating though the light in her eyes dimmed.

"Why aren't you fighting me yet?" The acid question was one that hurt as much as its continuation: "Don't you have more mockery of our brother's life to do?"

"Kori, I...."

She pointed to the sphere of time-distortion and the warring darkness and fires around them, the brief flashes of a terrible burning sword.

"That was Raven, there, wasn't it?"

Kori nodded, a pall of sharp fear on her face as she landed with a cratering impact on the ground and a small cloud of dust.

"She....means something to you. Like Robin."

Kori nodded.

Blackfire clicked her teeth.

"If I wasn't already convinced that this was futile finding out that one's your girlfriend would have made it so."

Her smile was wan. "What chance do I have against a being that killed Trigon the Terrible?"

She looked at Starfire closely.

It was about then that her words fully registered.

"What is futile?" 

"Our old feud. They passed me over for you because the Psions attacked our homeworld on our birthday and I was blamed for it. Then before the Psions got us I was stuck with that disease that meant I couldn't fly. Just leap." Her grimace was....harsh.

"I hated you for that, Kori. I hated you for it in so many ways. You were given everything and I was given nothing, so I wanted you to feel every bit as unwanted and unloved as i did. And nothing ever worked. Robin, Galfore...."

She breathed heavily.

"I wanted to be a true child of X'Hal and so I am. You've seen her."

Kori wanted to protest, wanted to claim the glowing being with the blasts of fire that Raven had shielded her from with that same selflessness that had seen her refuse to allow her friends to die on her behalf on that day of days could not have been their goddess. Yet she remembered all too well that level beneath the one where X'Hal had fought, and the oubliette that was there, and that light that had shone with a heat that alone in her entire lifetime had really and truly _burned_ her until the Psions' monstrous experiments had healed them.

"That was her, wasn't it?"

Blackfire nodded.

"I saw what she can do, Kori. She's a being of energy but she's like Trigon, or that thing that's possessing Raven, if you can even possess the most powerful demon on the material plane."

Blackfire grimaced. "I'm the only one of my entire squad left, and she wants me dead and now you dead."

She sighed.

"This is going to be bad, and I'm sorry. You have no reason to accept that or anything about me but....I don't know what I am anymore. I've seen X'Hal. I did model myself on our Goddess. And that monster in there is what I am, what I became. I don't know what I will become, but I will not be like what I saw there."

She winced, and then her head was in her hands.

"Just how bad would it be if she did break out of where she is?"

 _ **Unpleasant**_ , a voice spoke with a resonant power that shattered the air. Fire of a horrifyingly familiar sort with the same heat materialized in their peripheral vision and they were levitating, then, facing a being they remembered from when they were children. 

"Lord Auron," they said as one.

X'Hal's son smiled. His mother was a monster that wanted the universe to burn in her wrath, the vengeful and malevolent aspect of Vega and of Tamaran. He too was a deity, but in him the good endured, if no less capable of destruction when required.

 ** _You have grown since last I saw you._** The smile was real and then it vanished.

 _ **There are other problems.**_ He pointed up.

_**A Psion flagship is in orbit over this world, preparing to enact their Eschaton Protocol.** _

A ship descended from the sky, cutting through the time-distortion effect that was within space and was why the ship had not fired hours ago. He froze. That ship was glowing a brilliant green and there was a power on that ship that could lay low gods and arch-demons, a power that seldom left its world but when it did.....

His gaze drew Starfire and Blackfire, the latter much quieter than the former, the former only familiar with what the tools of the Guardians could do.

The ship landed gracefully and two teams left. One was the Omega Men, Starfire's hair raising like the cats she was descended from at the sight of Gordanians, and then calming before starting to move to great joy when she saw her-

Someone tackled her with a cry of joy in their birth-speech that made the heavens echo, and she was on her back.

"Missed you!" She looked at the wondrous smile of her brother and her own smile mirrored his.

He raised his hand which sparked with energy at their sister, then the energy vanished when he saw the deep sorrows in his oldest sister's face.

There would be words spoken, hard ones, but it could wait. It must wait.

REALM OF NIGHT:

Death looked around with a look of bitterness and unanswered grief that flooded through her with a manner that Night could not possibly miss. Night herself looked cautiously. The last time she'd spoken to one of her Endless children that one had broken not long after the talk, and she had been there at his funeral. She had contributed to that with a small part, and that meant that her usual apathy for a change was replaced by regret, and a willingness to act. Death had not seen her since _her hand grasped Death by the neck as her daughter stared at her in a mute horror, mouthing pleas to her and to Time, whose ginger-haired face was stern and yet he could not quite meet her gaze and neither did she. She pleaded and she begged, grabbing her mother's wrists. Young, then, a child for the only time in her life, not yet the full grown being she would become. Young, and begging not to be thrown and then a flick of a wrist and she was falling, falling, falling, staring at the realm she was sundered from until a certain pair of events came round at last._

Night froze. She knew how things had gone, _she and Time had deciphered that her eldest daughter, unlike Despair or Delight, or their sibling Desire whose being was perfect unity in certain aspects and beyond such things as 'he' or 'she' had arrived there and was not truly born as the others were. Indisputably theirs but there were subtle tells. A being whose very nature was to show that they ended, who had that power and who had wielded it. It had not been Night along who had grasped her then, it had been both of them, holding her suspended in a combined field of their power and teleporting her away and refusing to look at her or to see that she was not pleading or asking for love or recognition, merely bowed beneath a great weight, far too old in that moment for one as eternally ever-young as she._

Yet that was not the memory she'd seen. And it was a memory, the first and only time she'd seen Death truthfully young and not the ageless adult she'd always seemed to be, a child who wore a skirt willingly for the only time in her life, her hair, then longer, in a braid as she'd begged. It was a memory she would retain all her life and would lead her to seek her estranged ex for the first time in centuries to confirm that he had not remembered this, and then both were worried at what it meant. Time would find himself grateful for the memory and the sight, the idea that the strange being that was their eldest daughter had been.

That harshness, which had seen her thrown out instead of leaving when ready to assume her function as her siblings had all done. Even their eldest son, Destiny, had taken its toll.

Night and Time were not good parents, not by any standards of an objective quality, and there was a quality to this in all tasks. Yet they were not the kind of heartless monsters that something like the Trigonian family would be and was to its kin. Night felt......she was not used to feeling at all, but to feel troubled, to know that her daughter had so little faith in her that even Dream, and Delirium, with whom after her she was most estranged, did not dare to speak or let herself look at her.....

They walked, Night's stride slow and determined, Death's fragile and tentative, and she caught a glimpse of the sheer burden on her daughter and the unfamiliar emotions surged more strongly.

Night formed a throne (noticing her daughter's small sound and not caring to acknowledge the implication) and then a chair of intentional softness and gestured to it.

 **Sit down.** Night flinched afterward when she recognized her tone was too commanding, and when Death flinched in turn, looking at her hands to make sure she could move.

She moved to the chair and sat with a deep fear in her, a fear of being tossed from this realm again as a threat.

 **I.....** she began, and then decided if she was going to broach things this way she might as well go all the way with it. **You truly are not from this universe, are you?**

Her daughter trembled in an existential fear that made Night worry at a deeper level and let herself move her head in what was a negative gesture and a sign of how terrified she was to be here in the realm of a being that had thrown her out at the hint of such a recognition. 

**How many?** Night's question was sharp, again, but softer. **_Thirteen thousand, three hundred and_** _ **sixty-two**._ Death's answer was barely audible, and she missed that Night froze, then, in a horrified awe that had her off her throne and then moving straight for Death who did look up to see this and closed her eyes. Part of her felt the deeper regrets left unsaid with her true mother, and part of her wondered what new Hell she'd go through now, as if living beyond her family and having only being thrown out and ending her father and mother's lives wasn't punishment enough for her. Night's hand slid to her face and Death's lips parted in a silent scream of worry at what could be, only to see Night checking on her as a mother would a daughter.

Tears pricked at the edge of her eyes but she blinked and willed them away.

Night looked closely at her, and she could feel what was akin to her mother's breath against her and those eyes gazing very keenly at her, and within her, and then she heard the entity speak: **Truly a daughter of my flesh and blood, though not born of it.**

Night strode back to her throne and resumed her seat. 

**In how many of these have we spoken since......the last time we saw each other?**

Death's fear faded and Night's unfamiliar sensations roiled her more strongly when she saw a very old mace of glacial brittleness resurrect itself, Death refusing to let herself hope, or feel, to be hurt in any way. 

_**None.** _

A single word laden with so many emotions, and Night leaned forward with her hands steepled.

**Then you must be truly desperate or lonely to come to me, then.**

Death's mask shattered and she was not fearful, she was angry, lost deep within her sister's realm as her sister looked in shock to see her _true_ sister in so many of her mirrors. Her rage boiled out atop that and she left the chair and grasped her sigil preparing to leave. 

**_I wasted my time. I should never h-_ **

Her mother's hand was on her and she turned and she prepared to focus on her sigil and leave only for her mother's hand to lance out and she spun over, slamming against the chair. She clutched her cheek with a new fear. 

Night looked at her coldly.

**You do not leave my realm unless I give you leave, not when you have come here. I wanted to clarify how much this has happened. I suspected it then, now I know it. If you cannot bring yourself to do this then, then I will have the information I wish.**

Her daughter's cheek was bleeding and her jaw was slightly off tilt, blood pouring down and she did not wince as Death pushed her jaw back and groaned with the pain, and moved cautiously to the seat. 

**Tell me why you're here, daughter.**

And Death did, telling her the story, not quite everything but enough. Night leaned forward, listening to Death's agonized descriptions of what it was to outlive her family, to become worn down by this until the very weight of everything led her to snap twice-over. Once in this world and in this portion of reality by an indulgence in hedonism to feel loved and wanted, once in another where a monster that had an obsession with her manifested and had his way with her again (and Night's hands gripped her throne's rests with enough strength that the metal and the wood yielded from the anger that surged through her at that thought at all). Death spoke wrenchingly, too, of feeling sympathy and understanding of Destiny's choices and yet feeling violated at a level beyond, not just for her, but for the demoness she was with. 

It took her time to tell the story, and then when she was done.....

Night leaned forward and asked her the first question that came to mind:

**You said when the Kelzhandari offered you the prospect of ending that you wanted to take it. You have said that it is now your thirteen thousand three hundred and thirty third take on Existence. Did you ever try to....to end it all?**

Night was not a good mother and had no real desire to be one, for her children had their lives to live and she had hers and her function and was above them and beyond them all and beyond all else. Yet no parent, even one as Night and Time, wanted an answer to a question like this to be even once. There was apathy and there was the kind of mentality to hear this and to care nothing for what was said. 

**_Twelve hundred and thirty one,_** Death sighed. **_I have tried every known way from my own hand, from the hands of immortals and deities, from the hands of mortals. I have tried in many of them to truly die on that blade that slew my sister. I have tried not to enter reality at all, simply sending my sigil that there would be a corps of entities representing my function rather than me. Nothing has worked. I continue to exist. And yet, when offered a chance by a being that truly could do it and end me, let me see my real family, my first family, and not each successive iteration that endures all of this set of events, I shunned it. I want to die until I am given a true prospect and then I do not take it. What is wrong with me?_**

Night was off her throne then and held her daughter tightly, her hand in her hair and she heard Death's silent scream of grief redolent with so many emotions of so many other hers that had so much else crusted with them in her shoulder as much as if Death had let herself vocalize it. Her daughter's realm was often seen as a cold and forbidding place for all that she had learned warmth. But she was warm and her tears still moreso, Death cried, the burdens crusted over her shattering and she seemed to just slump, unconscious in her mother's arms for a moment. 

It was not a long moment but Night felt something else, a maternal feeling that occurred seldom and for one more ancient than Destiny or the power to Dream and whose being was essential to theirs, who predated the Silver City and the great Creators for she was the Chaos from which all that was was constructed of and upon, seldom was a time to savor. She leaned down to kiss her daughter's forehead, waiting on whatever had happened to pass.

\--------

_For a moment, a single precious moment, Death found herself in a space that was impossible, that could not exist. There were beings there. One was tall and clad in his old suit of metal armor, a friendly smile on his face. The youngest of the bunch squealed excitedly and tackled her older sister, the twins somewhat more distant, the face of the stouter one with her hook in almost-shadows. There was Dream clad in white with eyes that were fields of the very stars themselves, and there was Destiny, no book, for his time was done and there was nothing to read. And too, their parents._

_She looked at them shocked and guilty and ashamed. She had dishonored their memories and their futures and there was so much she never had the chance to s-Dream raised a hand and then she was able to speak, and she unburdened herself, and even if it was in this single instance of being truly lost in a sphere akin to her brother's, even if this was Desire's accursed trick with the Mercy all over again, she let herself speak and let go of a few of the regrets. Only a few, but a little was better than none._

\------

She awoke in her mother's arms, looking at her and then at her hands as if she was.....

She pulled herself out of the embrace she'd longed for for countless universes and held herself.

 _ **I'm sorry, mother. I know you do not like it when we come to you with our troubles any more than father does. I wasted your time. I'm sorry I'msorry-**_ and before Night could hold her again Death was gone.

For a long, long time Night stood there in her realm, her hands open.

The Endless in many ways were a family that showed how not to be one, but Night stood there with her hands open and the things that she had glimpsed and pondered them. She was apathetic, she did not desire to speak to her children much, for they were grown and they could take care of themselves, and of them all this one was the one that had been so unlike the others she had not hesitated to react to preserve herself first and foremost.

She had seen what her kindly and her icy masks hid. Her daughter had shown her that in spite of herself and the second that this connection had existed she was gone again, not by a will not her own but by hers.

Night sighed and the chair remained, a new fixture of her realm with an ankh carefully inscribed into the seat, and she sat heavily on her throne.


	6. The Battle of Okaara Part II:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Eschaton Protocol strikes Okaara and the battle comes to a cataclysmic finish. 
> 
> A tearful farewell between a family that remains sundered follows, and Raven decides to take a great gamble.

OKAARAN ORBIT:

The Eschaton Protocol was one of the few things the Psions had not gained, in a distant past, from the Guardians of the Universe. A time-displaced mountain-ship had erupted from unknown energies over the orbit of their world when they had first grasped space travel and faster than light travel, when the Citadel was not yet a concept known. It was reverse-engineered imperfectly from the weaponry of the ship and insofar as they could grasp its nature it seemed like a concentrated set of energy drawing directly on the nature of Gods. Something like the Alpha and Omega effects of the Kings of New Genesis and Apokolips, respectively, though the nature of the Gods were unknown.

Reality itself trembled and they knew even absent the time-distortion that their ship would not survive the unleashing of the energy in question. And yet beneath them there was a Guardian of the Universe, a daughter of Trigon with the power of an Endess, and X'Hal itself. They did not know if such power, which had destroyed ships but utterly and retroactively unmade whatever it encountered, would hold against this.

Light sparked from the edge of the ship, jagged energy that was and wasn't like lightning with whisps of something akin to smoke erupting. Space was soundless and yet in the void of space there were sounds like thunderclaps and the nature of the energy called upon speared through the time-distortion, and it struck all of them, their ship and its wondrous weaponry and they themselves fading into nothingness as it lanced outward. The dreadful energy formed a vast pillar of fire and lightning and a column of smoke that had turned a whitish-grey from the kind of connection to the lightning and then with a terrible shrieking bellow like that of a wounded God, as the starship disintegrated in the wake of the power it called upon, the power erupted downward.

THE BATTLEFIELD, OKAARA:

The first sign of the onslaught was when lightning crackled in the skies and thunder pealed instantaneously to the flashes, a thing that drew the eyes. The second was when the time-distortion shattered and then X'Hal roared in agony as the beams that had suppressed her once struck true. The third was an aura of brooding menace that came with the energy, and the warring combatants paused for a moment. X'Hal formed a great shield of fire augmented by the power of the Guardian and the daughter of Trigon, all grasping immediately the nature of the terrible strike, the dreaded Eschaton-energy of the Psions that had almost never failed, and up to what would unfold against them had never failed.

The first battle with X'Hal had made a beautiful garden world a desolate wasteland of harsh mountains that raised hardy and skilled fighters.

The second would deal new devastation and new scars as the lightning and smoke energy slammed into the shield raised against it and an eerie howl of warring energies followed, and then an erupting dome-like blast of light that saw the Guardian and the Demon raise new shields to direct it upward, rather than trying to prevent its flow altogether, followed.

All felt pain though only the quasi-animalistic mindset of X'Hal voiced it, and yet in the clash of warring energies from the mightiest beings in Vega (bar one, whose wards at last creaked more fully in the wake of the terrible strike as Larfleeze awoke for the first time in millions of years) it was just enough to preserve their lives and those of the armies of the Warlords.

The Guardian slunk to her knees, exhausted yet relieved. The demon's daughter fell to hers, her body sore and aching and yet in the moment of contact she had seen her own life flowing before her and then that of everyone on Okaara, their past, present, and future. And for a moment she had seen a glimpse of her own mother's past that she had never been told. A determination grew then with her to do more.

The Jotunness and the Czarnian had been knocked out by the blow, the golden armor smoking and parts of it quite literally melted by the heat, Lobo horribly burned to match in a way the imagery of Jonah Hex, though his flesh was already working to repair the damage. Though they lived, the armies knew a temporary overwhelming of their bodies, a temporary blindness and deafness that would fade with the careful spell set by Raven, with time.

X'Hal wavered on her feet, her energy flickering for a moment, gazing in horrified awe at the power that had been unleashed.

Truly the Psions had not changed at all since the time of her ascension, but she saw the being both Endless and heir of Trigon on her knees, her armor smoking, staring at her hands in stupefied shock, and saw that her fellow foes were fallen, and that she alone stood. She raised her right hand and a powerful bolt of energy grew in that hand, reality crackling with an electric-ozone odor and a smell of harsh fires pervading the room likewise.

She let herself laugh, and then as she fired the bolt something happened that shocked her.

For but a moment in time the demoness and the human faded and an Endless arose empowered by the demoness and with a demoness's attitude, grasping her bolt of energy in her gloved hand as the armor vanished.

The Endless had hair in a short bob with a dark indigo hue and eyes that were glowing with a brilliant violet sunfire-light like those of Blackfire.

She spoke a single word:

**_ENOUGH._ **

Her gloved hands seemed to squeeze and then her energy shattered and she saw a being moving toward her that was a thin waif of a girl seemingly, and only in those moments did X'Hal grasp what Death could be if Death let herself yield to the kind of impulses that some of her siblings had (and that she felt too, simply refusing to let them shine). X'Hal fired bolts to more than gut Vega, bolts to tear the heart of a galaxy that would be left with Oa, Apokolips, and New Genesis as the only places where life endured if otherwise things had been true.

They struck the Endless with no more effect than a sword against an ocean.

She continued her stride, her gaze becoming still harsher, until she was standing next to a frantic X'Hal who was bellowing Won'tgoback notagain notagain notagain and then Death of the Endless, in her current shape, moved forward and simply spoke a single word, in a tongue older than Tamaran or even Apokolips and New Genesis. X'Hal fell as a stone, the battle over.

Death faded from awareness then and it was Raven who looked out and took the subconscious spell provided to her by her current set of power and prowess and expanded it astronomically, casting a wave of smaller scale but not unlike what she had done the day she had destroyed her father's manifestation in her Earth and her universe for all time. Bodies healed, and even the entity that had sought her death found herself healed, armor restored, and opened her eyes first.

The sour look of bitterness on her face gave Raven more than a hint of satisfaction, and the Jotunness breathed heavily, extending a fanged lower jaw out, and then decided to make nothing of it further. She moved to Lobo, watching as her colleague healed and Raven's attention moved more widely, healing all who let her do so, and giving the Guardian of Oa an extra boost beside. She reflected if and when she ceased to be an Endless not being able to do this would be one of the things she'd regret most.

She reflected, after it was done, on what she'd seen of her mother's life, and a thought occurred to her. It would be a great gamble, but one that could offer much more, including letting her glimpse the nature of this 'Alice' who had appeared in certain looks at the past in the years preceding this clash on Okaara.

X'HAL'S OUBLIETTE:

The old wards had failed because they had been constructed several million years ago and none had maintained them since. The unconscious X'Hal was placed back within her prison, sealed lest her escape bring sorrow and wrath and ruin anew. Raven and Lianna of Oa both added their own strength to the old markings, repairing what had fallen, adding new strengths and new redundancy in their stead. It was the first but far from the last time in her long life that Raven would meet one of the ancient immortals of Oa, and as with Ganthet Lianna would become a close friend.

For now they worked in silence, the partnership forged in battle new and awkward, and their teams quiet and in other places. They did not know what to say, though Raven knew at least some of what she wished said. Her gamble would be soon, but she would need to speak with her friends....and to shield Vega from the monsters that lurked at its heart. It was a quiet thing, incantations that spoke and sang runes into being. A relief, from the ferocity of the battle and from the being that had looked from her eyes as her dualism had tilted into an identity that, after two years, was at last firm.

They worked for what might have been minutes or hours, and then it was done, and both began what became a friendship of centuries with a stiff, businesslike nod and went their separate ways.

JUST OUTSIDE THE TITANS SHIP:

It was the first time they'd seen each other since the day Death had spoken and changed their lives. Her family looked good, if wearied by sorrow and the lack of knowing anything one way or another. She could see lines carved into Gar's face, the secrecy that hid behind his jovial facade. Even Dick, whom had a bit of a competitive and not always entirely friendly so manner to her since they had begun sharing Kori, felt nothing but a warm sincere relief. Kon was happy, if less bowed by the weight of everything, as was so with Wally.

She had taken hugs from Vic, from Gar, from Dick, and one from Starfire that was one of the few in her life at her full strength that did not leave her spending a couple of hours afterward feeling like she'd been hit by an eighteen wheeler. It felt warm, loving, like she was warm and she was loved. Part of her, a deep part of her that was transformed reacted to this with a strangeness that roiled within like a maelstrom but she could not answer nor understand quite what that meant and was not entirely sure that she wanted to.

For now it was enough to look them in the eyes, to show them that she lived, that she would return to them one day as herself again. Words spoken were few with most of her team, though the empathy said all that words could not, and would become a treasured memory across the next three years.

With Vic there had been longer words, within mind-speech and true-speech, and Vic had listened closely with a far more somber expression on his face than usual, and picked up Raven for a hug that otherwise would have been as bone-crunching as anything Starfire could do. She listened to him in turn and promised him:

**_When I return, we'll go back to working on that car again. I miss you. And I love you._ **

Vic smiled and whispered in her ear: "Love you too, sis." 

To Gar she had spoken mostly in empathy, because it was hard for the demoness and the embodiment of the Red to speak in this context where so many memories layered over each other, yet with Gar's animal-instincts and animal forms it was as if she'd talked as long as she would with Vic or Kori. They shared a brief kiss, redolent with memories and promises, and some of Gar's deeper sorrows hidden behind his mask were healed, a greater sense of hope and contentment taking their place.

It was with Kori, with whom she went off in private that the longest words were spoken, words that Kori would ponder over and treasure. The first thing was a kiss longer and deeper than that with Gar, Raven's hands moving along her face and her shoulders and her hands to memorize Kori's body and its feel, knowing that however long time took to lapse it would seem both infinitely long and ultimately would need more than simple empathy here. Kori welcomed it, and as Raven's fingers looped around the back of her hand, she took Raven's left hand and placed it on her left cheek, leaning into it.

Raven said:

**_She won't leave me like this for long, Kori. She's.....hurting too. She'll come around and then one day I'll wake up again in the Tower, I think, and we'll all see where we go from there. I won't lie, I want that to happen....very much. And not just because it takes me from my family and those I love most. I see too much. I know too much. Nobody of mortality born was meant to see or know this._ **

She sighed. 

**_I'm still me, somewhere in all this. And she is definitely still her. It won't last because she's out there and she is too dutiful to let it last._ **

Kori nodded, her voice husky with tears. "We thought you were dead, Rachel." She couldn't more than whisper the phrase even as she kissed along the palm of Raven's left hand. 

**_I'm here, right now. And I will be here. We are family, Kori, nothing will ever change that._ **

Kori wept tears of mixed sorrow and joy, listening as Raven continued:

**_I have seen so many things and so many ways for people to.....to die. I know the ways and the ins and outs of grief that much more._ **

She clicked her teeth. 

**_But nothing I have seen in any of that is better than the Tower, than the family that took me in, or than the people I love and love with an intensity I'm not sure any of the Endless can feel._ **

She pulled Kori into another kiss, wishing she could never let her go, but knowing she must. 

**_I will be back, Kori. Nothing, not even the mightiest of the Gods or the beings beyond time or space can stop it._ **

Her lip quirked slightly. **_And I've got a life-debt with that Jotunness now. I could have rescinded Death's protection on her and let her die from the wounds given to her and I did not. So she won't bother us again. Not unless we're part of....everything else._**

Starfire sighed in relief, seeing Blackfire give a now-healed Lobo and his colleague their money and feeling the heat of their passing in the teleportation backblast.

_**Soon, my beloved. So very, very soon.** _

Another kiss and then in a flash of black and white energy that had been cold once and was now so very, very warm and soothing to her team Raven vanished, for the tasks she had to do were manifold....and there was a vision that she wished herself to see.

RAVEN'S NEXUS:

This was it. This was the gamble.

She had seen what her power could do at a more destructive level, and seen elements of the broader grasp of knowledge.

She had seen that Death could see the lives of the long-departed, and now.....

There was an ache in her that was not of her doing, a sense of long-departed grief for a sundered family, of parents and of children.

And there was an ache in her that _was_ of her doing. Arella lived, and they remained distant. She wanted nothing to do with her sister, of whom she'd said nothing, nor her still-living grandparents, of whom she'd said less. Arella lived, but Angela Roth of Gotham had mentally and conceptually died, and in that sense Angela Roth-as-idea had encountered Death as-harvester-of-her-own-kind.

Arella lived and they were as distant as Death and Night, but she would not go to see her mother until this burden was cast aside. There were words that needed to be spoken, and it needed to be Rachel Roth of Gotham, not Raven, daughter of Trigon, that said them, and certainly not Raven, Harvester of Souls.

And yet here, it was this Raven-who-was-and-was-not-Death who was within the sphere of Raven, daughter of Trigon and of Arella, who raised her hands. Before her hinged a part of Death's heritage from Time, from Time and from much else besides. It permitted her to see the lives of souls, and she called up first that of her father, the Demon Trigon. She knew of his backstory from her own sources, and from the moment where Death herself had slain him. It was a moment that haunted her, and if her counterpart insisted on shoving her own issues into her face, if the woman she loved had those issues, then she would seek her own path to mitigate what it meant for her in a situation where she had to hope that Time could find a way beyond it.

_In a distant realm she saw the origin of the demon Trigon, the time when the Empire of Tears had been one of the mightiest forces in a galaxy of Magick. There were other creatures there, her true-kindred, and she saw them. A creature of Inversion and other things besides, and the malevolent monster Atrocitus, the true-brother of Trigon (and in their fanged mouths and reddish hue she saw the kindred in full). Then Green Light came and the new Guardians of the Universe waged a bitter and a terrible war and one by one the Empire of Tears fell, constrained and locked away in two places. One a distant world where the Lantern Abin Sur encountered them and thus fixed his destiny, and that of Earth, down a wholly new path. One in Sector-666 (she raised two eyebrows at that name) where Atrocitus was locked away._

_And then there was her father in youth, where his hair was a reddish-orange, alone and triumphant, deciding to expand his power and its glory beyond all things. Last of the Empire of Tears, he had become the nexus of all evil in the multiverse, and as long as it existed, so would he in some form. He was the gigantic creature that had turned her homeworlds into rubblefields of molten magma, Azarath strewn with corpses, the Earth turned to stone. He was very much a hulking brute, and he was suddenly looking straight at her with a cold and cruel smile._

_**Daughter of my blood and of Time and of Night. My vision is a true one, then. Worry not, child. I shall find the little Endless, and you shall be born.** _

_He laughed, coldly._

_Her parents cast her from their realm into our sphere, and she remains alone and isolated, the hatred of mortals renders her weak._

_**He hit his chest. I shall show her strength.** _

_And then she saw from his perspective and her own what happened, Trigon hurled Death on her back with a sharp blow from his sceptre and as she groaned in pain burned off parts of her clothes, exposing a body that Raven knew well, looming over her._

_When he began to say her True-Name, Death's eyes flashed with a terrible hue and she raised her hand and then there was the agony of dispersal into inchoate energy, the background radiation of Existence, and of mortal mentalities. Long did that lifetime endure, until a time fated at the dawn of time arose, and a Rite summoned a portion of that energy into a hollow mortal shell._

_From there the vision shifted and she saw her family, the Hongs, of Guangzhou. A long set of lives lived and her love meeting a peasant of that lineage and that name in the early 18th Century, spending a mortal day hearing his dreams and what dreams they were. Then the 19th Century and another ancestor of hers, Xiuquan Hong, who had nightmares of terrible demons, reddish things with multiple eyes and sneering voices and in that process encountering missions led by a man named Issachar Roberts. She witnessed what came after. the horrors of Heavenly Peace, and felt a sick shock at realizing her human ancestors were capable of horrors to match her demonic ones._

_From there people of her family had fled to the United States, and her biological grandmother, suffering from biological weaknesses that were amplified by her pregnancy, was so hurt and damaged in areas physical and mental from the pregnancy that she'd given up twin daughters. And so two daughters of the Hong family had been adopted as Angela and Alice Roth. Their adoptive families were Ashekanzic Jews who had converted to Catholicism in the generation before the Second World War in hopes that it would protect them from the horrors of how little Europe loved its Jewish inhabitants._

_So they had hoped._

_So reality proved otherwise, and the two shattered survivors of a family of twenty-four had come to the United States, where their children adopted two little Chinese-American girls, and raised them Jewish._

_Angela had bucked against her background, and rebelled hard. She had become the wild child, lost into a kind of hedonistic element, one that led her to see the image of something that had interwtined around her. Part of her expected to see the golden-eyed thing with the two shadows, but it surprised her when she did not see this....and instead saw horribly familiar energy of reddish hue with four golden eyes seeming to reach into her and through her like puppet strings, if a raw and visceral flesh-like fashion. Her mother had bad dreams and shook, her voice at times taking on a guttural aspect._

_And then the night that she ran away to join the Cult of Blood in that church she awoke with hair as violet as Raven's, staring in the mirror and hearing seductive promises._

_She caught only glimpses of that night and knew that her mother's love for her in spite of how that had happened, the golden-eyed figure revealing himself a monster and all that had followed from it, including the physical and emotional damage, spoke well of her. She shut her eyes and heard the sounds, and even if she could not actually change the past wished that she could, even if ht meant that she had never existed. Her eyes opened to see her mother clad in the torn robes of the cult staggering barefoot on a Gotham night, a poor decision in any context._

_When a voice spoke only partially muffled by a red hood and she heard the phrase:_

_"Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?"_

_She saw her mother's gaze turn and then there was a brief flash of the Devil she'd encountered and the being that held that gun at her dropped it in shock, shivering. It would be a year or two before the invention of Smilex, and more time than that before the clash with the vat, but...._

_And then Azarath came. She smiled softly at the image of Azar, the true Azar. The demigoddess with white hair and a smile that was outmatched in kindness only by that of Death herself, clad in a crimson-hued sari, and reaching out to her. The thing that had twice sought to devour the Fifty-One worlds had proclaimed herself the Goddess Azar, proclaimed whatever goodness Raven had been taught had a foundation of rot. Yet seeing Azar herself again, Raven wept soft tears of relief. The monster had lied. Or perhaps, even if it told the truth, Azar had found a goodness in its creed and thus defied it._

_A very literally demon-haunted girl looked at a being who stepped from a golden rift with hands outreached, face lined with age (nearly 400 years, at that), and hair white as snow. Words were said of mind and heart, and the lost girl reached out to the demigoddess who stepped out, and took not merely her hands but an embrace. And in that embrace the golden light intensified and at last the cloud of terror and manipulation and the subtle changes worked by the Demon fell away, and she wept in horror and grief._

_Angela had not known that Alice had delved slightly into her sister's magick, when she had run away, and taken an object of hers to try to find her. She did not see what Raven saw with her eyes bugging out, all four of them. Alice had just found her sister staggering as the Red Hood had run, when the golden light slit the night, and in a mixture of awe and fear she saw Angela take the embrace and then step into the golden rift. It was the last she would see of her sister, or of her family, until-_

_One last vision. the night that Koriand'r had fallen from the skies and Jump City's new team had rallied together to defeat Gordanians in their first achievement as a team, salvaging a ship of Tamaran that Cy slowly and lovingly worked and reworked. Alice Roth-Williams, now married to a Christian who was happy to raise his children Jewish and haunted by old and secret fears, saw a being in the news in Jump City, across a continent. She was ashen-hued, but the shape of the eyes and the chin, and certain subtle mannerisms meant that Alice seemed to come alive, her hand delicately cradling a bump where her youngest was not yet born, and strode to the TV, gently brushing the image of Raven, glimpsed unhooded for one of the few and only times those outside her team would see her thus, and weeping out of sorrow and joy and relief._

The past faded and Raven, for a moment, stood, her new visions and power flooding through her, and she stared in mute shock.

_**She knows who I am....who I was. Who I might be again.** _

Her gauntlets clenched.

_**The moment, if I ever get free of this....** _

She closed her eyes and folded her arms around herself and sat on the pinnacle of her Nexus. An old gesture, one worn well into a bed that was lovingly preserved in the hopes that the parting that they had had this time, the proof that she lived, would see her return in full.

REALM OF NIGHT:

 **Mother?** Dream's voice was cautious and she bit back a vicious snort of laughter. Daniel Hall might be the core of this new Dream but he remembered all too well how well the last visit of Morpheus and her had gone and that was present in the ways he looked around.

 **Greetings, son**. Her voice was warmer than usual and it saddened her that this made him nearly as fearful as Death, if for different reasons.

**Your sister came to see me.**

He gasped, slightly. **Our older sister?**

She nodded. **The very same. She is....troubled, Dream.**

She steepled her hands. **I will be talking to your father, though I caution you, all of you, against any hopes that we would be together again. Even if there were a will for this, and there is not, to do so purely on the basis of discovering how deeply troubled one of your children is and that you have made great mistakes that you have to try to ensure are avoided by your next incarnations....she sighed. No basis for anything that would last. And I know you, all of you. You will let yourselves hope when you should not.**

He flinched and nodded. Then his eyes turned to a share and widened when they saw the sigil there. A pained and bittersweet smile crossed his face, then, His sister helped him so much of the time selflessly, and he had seldom bothered to wonder if she too needed help. It was in his nature to think mostly of himself, but not to the extent that he had done it.

**She's hurting, son. You and your family were hurt enough when your brother left.**

Night did not move from her throne, merely shifted her position upon it and the dais beneath it.

**The demoness who has taken your sister's position for a time is not the party who has wronged or been wronged. She too is lonely and missing her true family. Not the house of Trigon.**

Dream nodded. **Yes, mother.**

Night let herself smile, slightly.

**Your father and I have failed in many ways, Dream. Be wiser than us, as children should be.**

Dream nodded and then let himself return to his realm. Destiny's sigil was gleaming and the Endless were to meet in conclave once more.

CONCLAVE HALL OF THE ENDLESS:

Five beings strode in, no sign of Destruction, for though he vowed to give his aid they had not seen him since. If there was a disappointment and hurt in their hearts, the other five did not let themselves show it. One by one they filtered in, Destiny first and most easily, for this was but a portion of his realm. Then Dream, stepping through his portrait, lost deeply in thought. Then Del, who flowed out of her portrait like lightning and then danced like a will o the wisp, singing a nonsense song of her own devising.

Then the twins, who moved together, and were much quieter than usual, especially Desire.

When a sixth portrait gleamed and a being clad in dark black armor strode through, her hair streaked with violet and her eyes gleaming with a violet light, instead of a red one, the Endless stiffened.

It was to all of their visible shock when Dream of the Endless turned to the being that held his sister's function and a version of her sigil in her right gauntlet and said:

**So long as you hold her function by her will, you are one of us. Welcome, sister. It has been....a time.**

Desire would speak next, and only Del would not say anything at all, not that the being that held their sister's function (for such was as far as they were willing to go with her) particularly objected. Her father's many titles included Lord of Madness so she was hardly averse to Del's mostly-silence and occasional conjuring of beautiful butterflies that walked on her armor and which gave her soft smiles.

In conclave did the Endless meet, and for the first time since before the death of Morpheus, they began to feel more like the family they were, if still in most ways one of the object lessons of how not to have one.

REALM OF DEATH, EARTH-616:

She was many things. She was Mistress Death to the monstrous Titan she had enthralled and ensorceled and remade into her terrible swift sword. She had spoken to him as a child, honed him. Trained him. Fallen in love with him in spite of herself, for she was ancient, not so much as her counterpart in the other multiverse for there were few things in their corner of existence who were equal, let alone older. She was ancient and he was a child and she had all the same come to love that child and willed herself to wield cruelty to teach him that lesson in turn.

She despised her counterpart, viewing her as a lazy and lackadaiscal being who did not respect her sphere sufficiently enough.

That had been an easier sentiment to hold before she'd last seen her and seen a glimpse of what lay beneath her own mask and realized what she had seen as an insufferable cheerfulness was no less a mask than her own icy reserves.

And then she had spoken to no less a being than the entity of Time from that world, the immortal concept of the other multiverse appearing as a withered greybeard with terrible eyes and a hulking warlord in his prime and asking her if she had seen his daughter.

She wanted to laugh, then.

They could barely exist in each other's proximity without harsh words or harsher actions. She resented, too, that her love Thanos had taken this one twice and that amplified it. And yet Time was in her eyes little less powerful than Eternity and Infinity and she dared not probe what lay beneath here, beneath the motivations. She could not bring herself to see Time as truly caring about his children in any real sense, and yet his words were leavened with worry and fear. She had answered a barrage of questions in reverse, often, to his responses to them and had found this as obnoxious as trying to talk to the naked blue man that had tried to probe at their universe as he had at the other before being given an unceremonious boot from Eternity who had no patience nor desire to face such an entity nor to have yet another fell hand at work.

The talk had ended both a week ago and a few hours ago (for her realm had needed well, ironically enough, time to recuperate from such a being's presence in it for no personification of Time was to be dismissed lightly in terms of his power to deform the world around him).

It led her to go to her own pool, from which she had drawn the information that sent Thanos of Titan onto his crusades in her name to balance her books.

She cast her own sight in a broader sense, willing herself to find her errant, vanished counterpart and what she saw disturbed her. There was not one such being with that power but two. One had fled her mother's realm and was rocking herself in a distant sphere she glimpsed but briefly, and the deeper griefs she'd seen beneath the mask were being given full fruit (and the effect of that grief and of power unhindered had either led this world to become a blackened charred thing or it had always been and she had scarred it worse, or both at once).

Another was a demonic figure in a Nexus who strode through her own past, purely exercising the sentimental desire to see her own mother, and even her own father. That brought her up short. Did the instability of the one affect the other? Did the true-Death know what she was doing to her temporary successor?

Her eyes hardened. Someone was going to have to shake some sense into the errant weeping concept. Someone here would likely have to be her, DEATH would be too tender-hearted, and so would the Jamaican.

And as for the new Death in that other world, the being that had once been the Reaper Billie would be more brutal than she would, and in a manner that would take a dangerous situation that hinged half her broader multiverse on a precipice and give it a solid sharp kick off of it with a steel toed boot.

Death brushed her hands and sighed.

She was almost desperate enough to contact _Hope_ of all of her counterparts, yet she couldn't quite bring herself to demean herself or her concepts that badly. Hope was more the childish fantasy of the kind she suspected Thanos wished she would and she wouldn't humor anyone, even one of her loves thus.

There was nothing left to do except to go do what she could do, if she wanted.

Part of her felt her lips pulling into something that an observer with less than Wade's brand of discernment would have mistaken for a smile. How the tables turned.

In a sudden eruption of dark energy redolent with a charnel house stench Death vanished, crossing between multiverses as easily as one could cross streets.

TENEBROUS:

Death of the Endless looked up in a blend of confusion and shock when she felt _her_ energy manifesting, and a figure clad in a purple robe and achingly akin to the Raven of Earth-Prime in her older face strode in.

 _ **You.**_ The word betrayed shock and wariness.

 _Yes, me._ Death looked at Death. _I know now that it is grief beneath that armor, and that you are consumed by it. You need to get yourself out of this. Your function works, but this......this is more me than you. I would punish Thanos for less than this by giving him my function and vanishing, and he has done greater wrongs to me and to my world than Raven has ever done to you. You punished her to strike at your brother. If any should have seen it, it should have been him._

Death stared warily. **_How....do you know all this?_**

 _Your father told me._ The Endless's laughter was bitter with a jagged edge of sharpness. **_Of course he'd see and speak to YOU._**

Death sighed, and then muttered to herself a small prayer that Oblivion and Eternity would forever her the risk. and then launched out with a hard backhand that knocked Death of the Endless on her side. 

_Get over your self-pity. You've wallowed in this for a few universes, or more than a few. It will not fix your agonies, nor will seeing and blaming Destiny, your father, the Demoness, or even the creature with the sword of fire do it. You cannot change if you permit yourself to spiral further down._

Her glare was sharp, and she felt herself wanting to resist showing the kind of face and wrath that made Thanos her love and her truest servant.

_You have to let yourself change, Tel. You are more than this. You let this stew, and now you've dragged your universe into two great clashes and into the aftermath of your little dose of hedonism. I regret that I slapped you, but you seem to want to indulge in masochism from unhealthy sources so perhaps a strike on that cheek of yours will get you to focus on an enemy that actually does deserve it._

Death looked at her cheek, the iridescent blood flowing again and sighed. _**First mother, now you.**_

The other Death paused for a moment. _Your family is more messed up than mine and I did not think it possible when Galan and Eternity and the like are my siblings for that to be, and yet....._

She sighed, and then sat down beside Death. _You can see this eternal recurrence as a pattern and become first bored and then trapped and spiral like this, or you can find other means to deal with it. You have seen a deeper truth. Oblivion, my other face, has seen it too. You know these deeper truths and all that go with them, so why feel mourning for this rather than processing that understanding and seeking to find in it a greater meaning? You are more than these worlds, more than your family alone._

She was silent for a moment, then decided there were no good ways to discuss this but someone had to try and she hated this task so much that the moment the opportunity came she'd find a means to vent her frustration on this world. A small cold grin of amusement crossed her lips at that thought. Yet she was much more sober and empathetic when her hands moved to Death of the Endless's shoulder. 

_Everyone has regrets of words that were left unspoken,but none in my acquaintance precisely as you have. This is not a weakness, Tel, it is a sign of strength. We share a function and yet you love and you care enough to think this way._

She clicked her teeth.

_Love is not weakness, though we express it differently. Grieve, if you need. But bring yourself out of this darkness. You are not alone, even if you think you are._

And then silence, as Death of the Endless held her wrist, remembering all the myriad ways she had tried self-destruction this way, and her claw-like nails brushed from the edge of her palms to what would have been a vein in most humanoid kinds of anatomy. She took a deep breath, and then eyes of darkness met eyes of infinite light, the eyes that had drawn the Titan into his mad, doomed crusades.

 ** _I will do my best._** She found that she meant it. Blood dripped from a cheek that would scar, for the first time in a very long time, scar in a way that her power could not readily repair. Her mother's wound dealt to her she could heal. One dealt by another of her kind in wrath, she could not, past a point. A scar with three straight lines and a jagged fourth, and she just bit her lip, and let herself see where things had gone, closing her eyes.

She was still unwilling to face her family, but......

It would only be three more years. A short time in the experience of mortals, and for one like Raven it would not be so much of her life as all that. She hoped Raven would forgive her when she gave her her life back.

END OF THE INTERLUDE.


	7. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Families sundered return to each other. 
> 
> A mercenary finds a war to fight.

_THE GARDEN OF THE FORKING WAYS:_

_Sister I hold your sigil. Will you speak to me?_

Destiny of the Endless stood, impassive, his book deliberately closed. He had seen the panels wrought in their bright primary colors and knew what they signified. It was strange. Once, the Endless had been outraged and refused to accept the one who had come within their ranks not by choice. Once, he had let his guilt and shame overwhelm the rest of him, letting him make grievous errors. Two years ago, in the wake of a cataclysm that was narrowly averted by the quick thinking of Okaara and the presence of the being who held their sister's function and a Guardian of the Universe (and if not for any one of theirs it would have failed all the same), this had changed.

He held the ankh, and knew that there was now an eighth painting built by six of the Endless together, the other five getting a brief glimpse at what Del would become when she matured past being Delirium. The ankh pulsed and the portrait seemed to ripple and shift as a being strode through. No longer clad in the armor reminiscent of the prodigal, she had taken to wearing a flowing black dress of the kind she would modify to become her new kind of superhero outfit when she returned. A long pair of slits up to the upper edges of her thighs were marked with black thigh highs and black boots, the dress sleeveless and with a low, dipping black. She wore two gloves, the one on her left hand leaving the two inner fingers exposed and the rest gloved, the one on the right in reverse.

She was still bone-hued though her hair had mixtures of indigo and black hues, and her eyes glowed violet, not the hue of their sister of blood.

Raven landed in the garden elegantly, her cape billowing around her for a moment.

 _ **Hello....brother.**_ Even now, her voice had a softness to it, a sadness that was akin to their sister's but it had changed in that. There was a cautious hope that Despair had mentioned a few times (for as all of them were dual beings, it was Despair who was hope and the mightiest of same). Perhaps the deep sorrows that had coursed through her that their sister had found if not altogether healing (for none of them were so optimistic. What had festered for countless universes would not be fixed so soon).

Raven moved one of her strands of hair from her eyes and then asked the question that her eyebrow and the firm press of her lips already wished to ask.

_**Why am I here?** _

_Come with me, please._

Intrigued in spite of herself, Raven followed Destiny of the Endless through the path, seeing the garden and its statues with a quiet awe. Destiny of the Endless was no small being. Though he contented himself mostly to watch, there were other forces that could lead to changes that were beyond even them. It was one such force, the unpredictable emotional patterns created by a set of swift changes, that led to their arrival at a table and to Raven pausing, shocked.

 _ **You did not call conclave**_ , her voice echoing with a wariness.

 _I did, I chose to change the method of doing so_.

She took her seat with caution, eyes flickering, and Destiny took his seat at the head of the table.

All of them were surprised when a seventh portrait that had been unused for a long time pulsed, the sword gleaming, and then a being clad in a heavy suit of grey armor strode through, his sword in his scabbard. Hope flickered still more strongly in the eyes of his siblings, and he bent down to kiss Despair on the forehead and gave Del a quiet and quick side-hug.

 _Our sister is returning_ , was all he said. _I am sorry that I did not find her_.

Destiny shrugged.

Destruction's gaze turned to Raven. _So you're the one who's been fulfilling her function when she's been out._

Raven was very quiet, emotions and memories that were not hers coursing through her. Including a surprising reservoir of something she had not fully anticipated.

Bile, envy. Resentment. Resentment that this being did effortlessly what took a supreme effort from her part and had never quite worked over all those lifetimes.

Yet this was stifled and redirected by a casual use of her empathic abilities as she let herself form a cautious smile.

She was surprised when the entity pulled her into a quick bear-hug and whispered into her ear:

_My sister's burden is heaviest out of all of us. I never knew how heavy until this happened. You have born it without becoming a monster or fleeing. You have more to yourself than you appreciate, daughter of Trigon._

Then he broke it and went to sit at his own seat, quietly talking with the family.

 _As brother Destruction has said, our sister of blood is returning._ Destiny's phrase caused the talking to halt, a set of expressions crossing faces. Unconstrained hope on the faces of Dream and Delirium, constrained on the face of the twins, and a shadow crossing the face of Destruction mixed with bemusement.

Then he pointed to the portrait that levitated at the summons of its creator, of which Destruction raised his eyebrow at seeing one even for him, if he should wish. Quietly he took it and shrunk it into his pocket, accepting it with a wry grin.

_You have been one of us for a half-decade, a time short even in the eyes of mortals, let alone ours, but in that time you have fulfilled our sister's function in all ways and have become tied to us in a way that you can never fully break._

Destiny permitted himself a small lip quirk. _And we do not want it broken. It has been a hard time for all of us, and I regret that it is not over merely because our ssiter return. Yet there are things and words to say between blood-kin that will only affect you indirectly._

_Since you are one of us, and have been one of us....._

Raven's eyes widened at the sight of the portrait with its symbol. Not the Raven she'd worn on an outfit she'd discarded in the wake of more time as being one of the Endless in power and function, but a kneeling Garuda-like aspect. The sigil of old Azarath and of its great goddess as she had known it. She went to it cautiously, taking it with reverence.

_The only one who does not have one as yet is our sister in blood, and that will hinge on what she does or does not. Of course.... Destiny permitted himself a soft laugh flavored slightly with sadness. She does not need it, either._

With that there was a last time for Raven to be with her second family of choice, words spoken and a kind of farewell party evolving not by intent but by the Endless welcoming a division of what had gone before from what came after. In its last moments Raven found that her sigil had changed, worked into her right forearm. The ankh was gone, but the Garuda of Azarath gleamed with a brilliant light. She let herself close her eyes in the Garden.

_NEAR CLARK KENT AND LOIS LANE'S APARTMENT, 1938 ACTION BOULEVARD, METROPOLIS:_

"I still don't understand what it is you think I can do." 

Karen Starr's gaze was curious.

 ** _You will come to understand, Karen._** Death's words were uncertain. Her gaze was miles away from them and she clutched her arm as if it hurt, badly. Karen had seen that since her return and did not question it, figuring if it was that important Death would have told her.

**_Here, I have to make peace and figure things out with Rachel and Kori, first and foremost. I hurt her, I hurt them._ **

She bit her lip and clenched her fists for a moment, releasing her grip from her arm to do so.

**_All I can tell you is that this is at least a part of why you've gone on for so long and that it will not be the last time your expertise will become necessary here._ **

Karen raised a golden eyebrow in genuine shock.

"I understand."

It was then that Clark's door opened and he stared in genuine shock.

"Power Girl?"

His voice was uncertain.

She nodded. "I'm back, for now at least. I'll need to re-activate all my stuff from Starr Tech, but for now, if your couch is available...."

Clark nodded. "No, no, of course."

Kara Zor-L permitted herself a soft smile. This was not her Kal-L, but he did not need to be. In every world the man Clark Kent was the best of Earth and of Krypton. And it didn't hurt that his couch felt like a bed in a five star hotel.

She let herself in as Clark looked down the hall with curiosity. He had thought he'd heard a familiar sound he'd heard once before when the Doomsday monster had killed him. A sound of beating wings, soft and lovely and with a warmth that had outpaced anything he'd expected. He shrugged. Even a man who could see atoms in Jupiter could hear things once in a while. He kind of liked that, it made him feel more like who and what he was. He closed the door.

_RAVEN'S BEDROOM, TITANS TOWER:_

Raven awoke in her own bed for the first time in five years. She would have sworn that everything she'd been through was a dream save for two things. A necklace, made of silver of a wondrous hue, with an ankh in its center, the ankh marked with relief-sculpted ravens and their wings through it. Her breath caught, and she wept small tears at the simple reality of _breathing_ again, holding the ankh to her chest. It was real, then. All of it. She did not retain all of her memories but knew enough to know that five years of sending the souls of the dead to the Sunless Lands and of finding herself caught in that had given her a wider and deeper perspective. And a humbling one. 

She held the ankh and rocked herself slightly, not seeing the being that looked at another ankh that she had moved from her pocket, nor the way she'd frozen for a moment and hesitated. Five years she'd been absent, the time it took an eye to begin a small portion of a blink in the eyes of her kind. Yet that was five years of her being herself and of barely avoiding something worrisome and finally being a part of what dug out her counterpart out of a terrible pattern.

She looked at her arm, where there were deep scars worked into it, and knew there were others like it. It had been painful but worth it.

Her eyes looked closely at the Raven who rocked herself, weeping and feeling her face as if she was grateful to truly be herself in a body she had long struggled with a deep and hidden sense of dysphoria and shame over, for it was a body meant to end worlds by its existence. She would speak to Raven soon. She continued to hold the ankh and to look at it, and then with a sense of deep calmness, placed it around her neck.

For a single moment a brilliant light shone and she arched her back as that light shone from her mouth and eyes and ears and nose, the power of her being restored to herself in its totality.

Raven saw the flash and looked but then it was nothing.

Her team saw the flash too and before she had a moment to say anything her door was open and her family, weeping, held her as she let herself shed tears in the same way and for the same reasons.

The Lost One had returned to her family. Her truest family, including he who had gone to Hell for her in the most literal sense and those who had helped her to defeat the terrible power of the Demon and of his works. In that moment of beginnings Raven let herself be contented with their arms. She had returned, and there was enough in that. And if she took somewhat more relish in feeling Kori's lips on hers and knowing that she would have to explain to Kori how she'd recovered and dealt with the aftermath of the terrible battle in X'Ha's Prison on Okaara, well...there would be time for that, too.

None of them, not even Donna and Vic, noticed that where the command feather had been there was now a set of paintings, each holding a sigil. Six of them, with hers just beneath a blank space.

_APARTMENT OF DEATH OF THE ENDLESS, ABOVE THE SUNLESS LANDS:_

Death found herself in this small place on the outer edge of her realm, where her truest self found its expression. She let herself make a small sob of relief to see Cavendish was still there, and was impressed that in five years the only lasting changes Raven had made were an addition of two new graphic novels (and she would have to ask Raven how she'd managed to step in and out of them), a few carefully woven blankets, and a small stuffed dragon to go along with her teddy. Her siblings had frowned at the bear, knowing nothing of how and why she'd acquired it. 

Knowing nothing of Cavendish being her only artifact of her first world besides the vengeful spirit who had spent time as a mercenary slaking her sadistic urges and burning with her terrible sword. Her chest ached. It had ached since that monster was banished, and since her new love had taken the sword that had nearly slain her and used it to break the command feather. She put her hand to her heart, beneath her breasts, feeling for a moment the blackened charred scar that manifested when her hand was there, feeling light-headed for a moment. There she had come closest to true death, a moment writ in her psyche and its terrible logic in each cycle of the universe.

Her first love had tried to murder her twice and she had had no reason to want to do so. She had taken Raven from her own family and forced her to become a version of her for five years. In the eyes of a mortal less tied deeply to a family than Raven was to her Titans that would be cause enough for violence. Yet.....she could not avoid her forever.

Nor, Death reflected as she moved her hand away and she held the bear for a moment and wept into his fuzzy head, did she really want to. She had done enough running for over thirteen thousand lifetimes. It was....she reflected with a weary wry grin, time for a change.

She felt a portrait pulse and simply blinked her eyes shut and nodded.

A being with eyes that had the infinite night in them, of skin as bone-hued as her own. His hair matched that now, it was no longer of the same infinite darkness as her own. She did not see him materialize bread, focused on her bear and holding him, nor did she see Dream stiffen for a moment as a memory coursed through him. His lip quirked with amusement at so many levels at the way he'd been surprised then.

_Dream felt the bip! of the bread hitting his head._

_**You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plain! An infantile, adolescent, pathetic specimen!** _

_And then a second memory more bitter than sweet._

_**I am tired, my sister, so very, very tired.** _

He knew what had come then.

Taking a single moment to compose himself, Dream hurled the loaf of bread at his sister and let himself enjoy for a moment the idea of reversing an old thing and when it hit her face with a bip! no less than the one that had stuck in his own memories, Death looked up, startled,, and she saw him.

 _ **Dream?**_ Her voice was uncertain, wary.

Dream's voice was amused. **Hello, sister.**

Death's voice was quiet. The words she spoke brought a deep chill to Dream given the horrid familiarity of them, from the mouth of the King of Hell who had been, and from his own.

**_I am tired, little bro. So very, very dreadfully tired._ **

She held onto the bear and buried her face in Cavendish's fuzz for a moment, as Dream took his seat beside her.

**I remember when you threw bread at me and told me I was not alone.**

For a moment Death remained where she was and then she raised her head, a small soft smile of bittersweet nostalgia on her face.

_**I did.** _

Dream's response was simple, and as much Daniel Hall as Dream of the Endless:

**You are not alone sister, never. You never were, and you will never be. Don't repeat my mistakes, because I made them out of pride and I know where and how it ended. I could make that choice. We lost you for five years, sister, and we did not appreciate what time is to mortals in a way until that happened. I died, Despair died, Destruction left. You....we could not see you, nor find you.**

He quietly pried her hands away from Cavendish and then took her wrists in his own.

**I don't know all the deep griefs that have filled you over the long long lifetimes you've lived, sister. I wish I could be certain that future versions of me would retain these memories absent something like this. But.....**

Death's eyes widened when Dream pulled her into the kind of hug she'd once given him, in each cycle, always bittersweet for she knew when destiny would call and what it was to take each facet of him and to do so with her siblings.

They widened still further when Dream gave her a single soft kiss on the cheek much as she'd given him one when he'd gone to find their missing brother.

**You are one of us, whatever your survival from another universe would say. Father can call you what he will. We.....were wrong, at the levels we did and have, to accept his decrees as meaning more than they did. You are not a stranger, we are kin. By blood and choice both. You do not in truth, I think, have to be one of us merely because you share that past yet you do. You give us all a gift. We.....wish to start giving some of it back to you.**

Death's smile was more sweet than bitter in response to that.

_**I have taken a hard road, little bro.** _

For a moment she blinked and something of the nature of her scars shone true, letting her siblings see what she would show to Raven.

Dream gasped, in no small amount of shock, his hands brushing the deeper scars cut into her left arm, and the one on her left cheek.

**What did this to you?**

_**I did**_ , she said with a smile-less face. _**There was another part of me who spiraled down a very bad place. She too got obsessed with Raven and did not accept that it was not returned. She was honed into a weapon and became a merciless force that is what I could have been if I became more like.....like her.** _

She clicked her teeth.

_**We fought, in the end. I made her accept that she needed to get out of that spiral, to atone for what she'd done and she willingly took those steps, and is taking them. But no blade can cut more deeply than one wielded by your own hand, with intent to kill.** _

She sighed.

**_As I said, a hard road. I needed that, and I think I needed to see something of what I could have been if I let my anger take over grief instead of sinking into an abyss that weighed me down._ **

Dream looked at the scars with that same shock, almost as if he was unwilling to let them go.

_**I'll be fine, bro. Scars aren't the end of the world. I will need to speak to Raven. I.....I love her. I want to be with her and to work out things, and that will take time.** _

Then she looked at a portrait hidden by her couch, and her eyes widened slightly as she stood up to go to it.

She unwrapped it with trembling hands and she stroked the sharp curve of the golden beak and the golden wings that extended from the hands with her lower jaw trembling slightly.

**She did well in your position, sister.**

She heard Dream behind her as she stroked the portrait and from it found herself absorbing seamlessly the memories of what Raven had seen and done while her function was hers.

When a memory of a terrible blast of fire that had ripped through her and nearly destroyed her launched by a vengeful goddess warred with the sense of love and protection that had led her to take it hit her, Death gasped at a different level as a painful spike of fear went through her.

_**H-How badly was she h-hurt Dream?** _

She seldom stuttered, but the memory of the visceral nature of that pain did not fade, the sympathetic fires giving her a low ache in her bones and seemingly in the very fabric of her being.

**Badly. We welcomed her as one of us and then she swooned, the burns coating her heavily. Destiny, Desire, and I restored her after....a few days in his Garden and his careful seeking to do so.**

Death flinched, the memory gripping her then. She had gone to confront her counterpart in her spiral and then the fires had burned within her and she had made a grievous error influenced by that pain, and she wondered if it had burned in her counterpart as well or if that anger then had just been her seeking to compensate for her own suffering by lashing out violently.

**Physically, at least, she is as well as she is going to be.**

Death strode with a mechanical stride, the emotions coursing within her locked in a variant of her glacial mask. Quietly she placed the portrait in its new place, just beneath her own, and looked at it with that same loving caress.

Then she went back to her brother and held him for a moment, whispering a litany of thanks in his ear and telling him she would see him soon.

With that she vanished, taking with her around her neck a shawl that wrapped comfortably, giving her a sense of soothing warmth. In the threads was woven an emotion that held her to clasp both the shawl and her ankh and to weep for a different reason. She vanished, as Dream went over to do what he had done so often in her absence, feeding her fish. The apartment had seemed cooler and darker since Death had left, her lands creeping into it as the Demoness in turn had welcomed the darkness, for she was in that darkness and she was of that darkness. With Death's return there was a warm pulse, and a soft light and the shadows of the Sunless Lands returned to their place, soothed by the return of their true queen.

_WARWORLD:_

"I am Mongul, nothing can stop me!" 

Yeneli smiled, having received the pulse from Lobo that he'd retrieved their quarry.

_**This was never about you, egotist.** _

She hurled Mongul against the wall of his throneroom and drew her blade, relishing its heat.

_**We came here to retrieve one of your captives.** _

Her smile was a demented one, and then she moved her blade with three effortless motions that left broken charred corpses hewn in multiple pieces as his servants were wrecked.

Her smile was still colder.

_**You should be aware, Mongul, that Superman is a forgiving person to those who would capture his kin because he is genuinely the kindest and sweetest being in existence. General Zod, on the other hand.....** _

And then she slammed the pommel of her blade into his face and he slumped onto his knees with a low groan of pain.

_**Dru-Zod doesn't forgive shit. When he gets his precious Faora back, you can count on that. And he pays.....very, very well. I think this is the last time ol' Lobo and I are gonna be working together.** _

By then Mongul was out and she gave a dismissive, cruel snort as she vanished in fire to link up with Lobo and the unconscious Faora. She grinned. Another job well done, and an employer who at last could give her the kind of tasks she was seeking. To humor the little bastard by calling him 'Generalissimo' when he was a glorified colonel wasn't that onerous a thing. For now, at any rate.

_BATTLEFIELD OF DENAREST:_

Uxas of Apokolips looked at the Parademon that had given him the message closely.

 ** _You are certain of this?_ **His voice echoed with a power that smashed into reality with the force of a brutish use of his own Omega Effect.

The creature cringed, going prostrate before him.

Yes, Lord Darkseid. Zod lives.

Darkseid's face cracked into a smile.

_**Interesting.** _

Then he tapped into his motherbox, pulling up the face of his wizened and malevolent advisor, Desaad.

Find the base of General Dru-Zod of Krypton. The little bastard's escaped the Phantom Zone. I'll not have Kryptonians amassing an army that could complicate plans for the renewal of the war.

As you will it, Great King. 

Uxas terminated the communication with that grin exposing square teeth and then resumed his striding across the battlefield, enjoying extending his power over time to slow his opponents' bodies while leaving them with intact perceptions that worked at the speed of normal time. To see them seeing a twelve foot tall behemoth striding toward them, the being densely built and more in the shape of Earth's bears than a living being. The six-armed alien, armored and wielding weaponry derived from bastardize Citadel tech (the Citadel itself having fallen a year ago from the cumulative effect of the strikes of the self-proclaimed Omega men, leading to an explosion in Psion tech across the galaxy) glared helplessly.

He strode willingly and then moved with that blinding speed that made him the physical equal of Kal-El and then with a satisfying crunch relished the gore of the creature's death, knowing that it was but one of a thousand of its kind frozen. A paltry element of the battlefield save that together they made up three quarters of the high command of the creatures here. Kalibak and Grayven were leading the armies and would do decent enough in the major combat, Kalibak in his element. This was more massacre than war but it was only fitting. His armies had not moved like this in conquest for a time, and there would be a need to retrain them.

The conflict with the monster from beyond the wall and the memory of it resurrecting his father was not a lesson lost. He had been shown again to be weak. Nothing did such a thing to Darkseid without paying a steep price for it.

_TITANS TOWER:_

Raven had finished telling the Titans the stories of her last five years. Most of them. They did not know how badly she'd been hurt or that she knew of her recovery mostly from what Destiny and Dream and Desire had told her. In truth they did not need to know. X'Hal was a monster, as dangerous as the demon Trigon and her father had hurt Death in the past. Hurt her badly, physically and emotionally. In truth the monster that served as a mercenary on the galactic scale worried her because where her father and X'Hal could be and were contained, there were only a few beings able to do so here. Thus far greed served as a restraint for her but.....

She'd finished telling the stories when her team stiffened. There was a sound of beating wings and then they turned with shock and worry on their eyes to see Death of the Endless materializing in front of them. She wore more than she had in her earlier appearances, a shawl woven and marked, though only Donna could see any of the elements of how much this was so, by Raven's own magic as so much else of what she knit was. It was a shawl of midnight blue, with little symbols and faces and things woven in. Death held her arm beneath the shawl and seemed to relish it, as Raven blinked and then her smaller normal smile crossed her face to see it. The Titans noticed it, but hard experienc with the Endless and the fear of losing someone they had just regained let them to rally in front of Raven. In particular, Donna, with Diana's Godkiller borrowed while Diana was on Themyscira recuperating from a recent clash with the drones of Brainiac, and Starfire chose to stand in front of Raven.

Death winced, her arm hurting her, and that wince defused things.

Starfire's look at her was venomous however, and that hurt. It was not the kind of venom directed at her by the Starfire of the other universe when she had come to dislike her in any form incarnation. It was...much more personal. She was Starfire's lover and she loved her no less than Raven, and yet, mused Death, were another to take from her one she loved against her will she'd hate them just as much.

So she gritted her teeth against the pain and raised her hands in a surrender posture.

_**I mean no harm. I had her take my function the last time to prevent more deathless years. She has done splendidly with it, and she has protected you still moreso in that shape than she did with the older pact.** _

The Titans still did not trust her.

Death sighed, and then the scars on her right arm from that blade and the terrible enchantments worked into it throbbed and she clutched her forearm with a wince of pain that led the hostility to waver much more completely.

_**I do love her, there were no others I could trust to wield that power without becoming corrupted by it. I've seen what can happen with it.** _

She grimaced.

**_Be glad there are things you do not know._ **

She looked at Raven, whom she could glimpse through the Titans as clearly as if they had not been there. Raven's gaze turned to her arm and there was a palpable strike of fear and worry there, her gaze looking to her with tears wanting to form and questions mouthed. She responded to them: 

**_I am sorry that I could not give an explanation easily. I was in a bad place, and so I acted without bothering to remember that there are explanations to give._ **

It was Gar Logan who asked with a genuine curiosity: "That why you keep holding your arm?" Death bit her lip. Yes. 

The Titans' hostility became sympathy leavened with sorrow, even Kori's gaze did so.

_**I was in a very bad place. It won't work with me, I know. There are other parts of me beyond this multiverse, in others. One of them....she went down the path of anger instead of sorrow and I had to get her out of it.** _

_**It helped me to get to where I can come back**_. She released her arm and steeled herself to work through the pain. Her arm was healing, she could move it now instead of relying on Tony Stark's and Reed Richard's genius to keep it intact and movable.

She had a somewhat bitter smile at that memory, then let herself look cautiously toward Raven.

_**I do love her, as I said. I have returned to not only show that, but to resume something of my life here.** _

The Titans' wariness shifted to a different key. "We shouldn't expect more Gods to have a brawl in our city, should we?"

Death shook her head almost frantically. **_No. The cosmic picture is back where it was. No more monsters from other dimensions, no more prospects of fate shifting and Asa-King trying to overthrow it. You won't see her gone without an explanation again. In truth I didn't know everything myself. What has she told you of everything?_ **

It was Kori who answered: "Your brother Destiny wanted to be free of his book for a while and he put you and her in a situation that did harm to both of you. She begged us not to blame you, and if anyone was to blame it was the monster from beyond the Wall."

Death slumped relieved. _**She tells you the truth.** _

With those words hostility vanished altogether and the Titans gave her a set of apologetic smiles. Donna sheathed the Godkiller in its scabbard, but it was Dick who went up to her to apologize, even if he remained rather cautious about touching her.

Death smiled with a gentle amusement. _**Your protectiveness of her does you credit.** _

And then they were alone together in a room full of people, Raven's look on her face showing the abandonment issues that haunted her for good reason. Her hand reached out to touch her own shawl, smiling approvingly at realizing the material had its softness and its strength together, the fabric reacting in its senses to her touch.

 _You kept it,_ Raven said. ** _I did,_** Death smiled. It feels....warm. **_And I don't feel as alone when I wear it._ **

Raven smiled then and leaned in to hold her tightly and the aches of the wounds on her arm and her back and on her right hip faded in that warmth as Death held her in turn, her eyes closed. They remained like this and had a quiet meal together, Death only drinking as the Endless did, and then they walked hand in hand to her bedroom. They paused there, and Raven smiled to open her door with her code, which remained the same.

_After you, my lovely lady._

Death stepped in past the threshold.

_RAVEN'S BEDROOM:_

Death kept the shawl around her for as long as she could, savoring its warmth and the sense of belonging. Raven walked around her room in turn, savoring its presence. 

If you're staying here, she began.

Death turned and nodded, to confirm that. She did not miss the way Raven's lip quivered a little. Good. I.....I was hoping you would. I don't hate you. I can't hate you.

She had a soft, somewhat bittersweet laugh that mirrored her own. I only have glimpses but I've seen enough of your lifetimes to know what drives you. And I thought I had demons.

Raven phased herself out of her clothes and went to shower for a bit, luxuriating in the feeling of water against her skin. Death remained in her room standing,and letting herself slowly just sit on the bed and continuing to hold the shawl, its warmth feeling like forgiveness and acceptance and other things she slowly was letting herself see she had always had, if she had let herself take them.

Raven stepped out of the shower, nude, and looked at Death with a mixture of emotions coursing through her, and with the familiar fires of arousal. And yet, looking at her face.....

She sat down beside Death. They had done too much with and for each other for nudity to be any kind of taboo.

Would you let me see you?

Death looked to her with a wan smile, and then nodded.

She moved the shawl aside and placed it gracefully on a nightstand that remained. Hers. Of wood stained as black as her hair and her eyes.

She folded it lovingly, as lovingly as it had been sown, and then let herself strip out of her clothes and standing exposed. She hid none of her scars, seeing Raven's eyes widen and then she stood up from her bed and padded over to Death. Her hand went to the cut on her hip, which she massaged quietly, working her own healing magic to amplify Death's own healing, as her hands gleamed and traversed along Death's arm and her cheek. Death had been used the last three years to a sharp pain that had only gradually decreased, but where Raven's hands and empathy worked for a time she felt the absence of that pain with a choked gasp and with it, the arousal she felt at being nude and in the arms of her lover intensified.

She pulled Raven into a deep kiss, her hands threading through hair that was longer, but all indigo, fingers of bone-hue standing out against a neck of ash.

They made noises of hunger, their bodies missing the comfort of each other after so long apart, and then Raven pulled Death to her bed, letting the other woman fall back against it. Death fell back closer to one of the edges, her arm altogether off of it and one of her legs likewise, her legs spread wide and fully, her juices visible and dripping on the sheets. She couldn't help but stifle a laugh as what had been meant to be elegant didn't prove quite as much so, and moved back toward the center of the bed as Raven slipped down, and with her eyes taking on a somewhat reddish gleam shadows darkened in the room and she heard the low rumbling of Raven's demonic nature.

The tendrils reached out for her, pulling her up toward the ceiling, suspending her arms over her head and leaving her legs unbound and spread of her own will.

Raven knelt in front of her and she could feel the hellfire-heat of the demoness's breath, gasping in contentment as it surged against her pussy, and then the demoness's tongue slithered out to slurp along her labia. She gasped, delighted, her toes curling.

I....missed this.

Raven's grin was visible and it was as much that of Pride of the House of Trigon as anything else as her hands slid out from the sheets and grasped Death's ass firmly and then Death saw stars as Raven went to work, her lips and tongue moving in a manner that reflected both eagerness and her experimentations in private moments in what had been 'her' bedroom with shapeshifting and her own constructs. Death approved, the ways she met her clit and found the right areas unerringly, drinking down her taste with a continual element honed by other experience, leading to her trembling and then undergoing three separate phases of multi-orgasmic bliss.

She felt the tendrils against her skin, the little nibbles, and cooed at the feeling in between each of the points where her vision became tinged with light and her body trembled in the fires that stalked up and around it. When the third phase settled, as she slumped on her haunches and trembled, the tendrils released her and she fell forward, pushing Raven down in turn, Raven's legs spread and her own body exposed to Death's sight. She smiled gently and then sought to return the favor, her hands on Raven's inner thighs and then her own tongue slipping in as Raven gripped her sheets.

Raven groaned unconstrained by anything to silence her, her groans low and echoed by the mouths that formed in the dark places of her room. The chorus that welcomed Death's attentions goaded her further, as she added fingers of her right hand and Raven felt her own bliss, the chorus moving from low moans to singing, a harmonious element that merged in with the noisy sounds of Death's lips and of the motions of her fingers, as Raven's own vision became clouded, tendrils of darkness scraping along Death's back and glowing with a bluish hue along the long and brutal scar that had cut across the small of her back.

Death purred then, the sound adding to the depth of her tongue slipping further inside Raven to bring her off again and Death drank deeply, not spilling a drop nor allowing one on her face. To have nothing of the pain that had been there and to have this again....

Raven was a quivering mess when, unknown to them both, nearly an hour and a half of Death remaining prostrate before her and exploiting her physiology to its fullest to work her body in a manner no being of physical form could do lapsed. She was barely conscious, murmuring nonsense syllables echoed by the darkness, which slunk back to become seemingly mundane shadows.

She murmured luvvu and then her soul-self reached out to grasp Death by her wrists and pulled her together with her, and then drew her sheets around her,

Death was in countless worlds and dimensions breathing life into the new and bringing the division of the before and the after to that which had seen its time lapse. She walked stars and planets and the void of space itself, in dimensions where ideas were tangible and in in the small unicellular elements of life. She performed her job with the old quiet friendship reaching outward, for the job was her and she was the job, and it had been years since she was doing this unconstrained. No brother grasping tenuously for what he wanted and had and wanted to have longer. No feather denting her ability and her freedom to fly, leaving her feeling mutilated and broken (and she was, then). No ever-hungry abominations from other dimensions trying to devour her home.

Just her and the spirits old and young and in between across worlds and times and dimensions that she spoke to and took with her as a friend.

Part of her, a part of her that had missed this more than she was willing to admit to herself, felt relief. She had returned indeed.

_MURAKAMI PARK, JUMP CITY:_

Death felt exhilarated. After five years and the terrible miseries of her breakdown, she had had a wondrous night with Raven and would seek to speak to Kori and to start working out the grievances there. Now she was here not by the brute power of a set of interlocking schemes but by choice. She was holding hands with Raven in the park, fully visible to mortals, back to being Didi D'Eath in a public sense. She had on the shawl Raven had given her, one of several things. Blankets, shawls, gloves. A skirt, carefully woven and pleated. Little gifts meant not for Raven-as-Endless but for her, and all of them precious beyond worlds. There had been much strife in her life, lately, and she knew that the reason she brought Kara back to this world was still out there in the depths of space. She had taken those souls recently and would take more, watching the venal and greedy traits slowly slip into the kind of vengeful destruction that had made her so apt a creation of her brother's. 

That would come later. For now there was a park and watching Gar playing fetch with Vic, her eyes carefully noting that Kori kept straying to her and the anger softened at points and then strengthened as if the momentary softness was an unforgivable lapse. Donna Troy was relaxing, sleeping on her boyfriend.

Wally and Iris were playing a game with Wally deliberately holding back his speed, as Sarah Simms gladly refilled her cup with lemonade and drank it down with a refreshed "Ahhh" sound, before slowly attempting to sneak up on Vic.

Kon and Tim for their own parts were relaxing together as well, sleeping on the other side of the tree to Donna and her boyfriend, Tim's arm on Kon's chest with a welcoming aspect to it, as Death gave them a soft smile.

Dick was currently manning the grill, finishing up the next set of food, and keeping a wary eye on Kori. The last time she'd been so excited as this a starbolt had burned all the food and they'd had Wally order pizza for everyone and bring it instead.

For her own part Kori was content to mostly fly around and luxuriate in the Sun. It had been three years since she'd last seen her sister, and her sister had willingly turned herself in to the Oans, to take whatever price they would give her for her crimes. Three years, and now Blackfire would be returning to Earth. Part of her wanted to believe the haunted woman her sister had been on Okaara but she had believed her too many times and been too burned.

Her eyes flickered back to Death and Raven, and then she remembered what Raven had told her in a quiet empathic conversation on their way to the park. Death too had strained relationships with her family. If anything could let them break out of things, now that Raven was truthfully returned to them all, she supposed, bonding over familial...issues...would certainly be a good place to start.

With that on her mind she descended gracefully, and decided to walk over to her two lovers with an effort of calmness.

She arrived just in time to hear Raven's offer made to Death and listened with shock:

_I've been wanting to see and to talk to my mother for a long time. When I had your powers I could see her past, and I saw things that make her....make more sense. We've got rifts of our own, and as you are trying to heal yours, i want to heal mine._

Her eyes turned to Kori _ **. You are both my girlfriends and my loves, and I want to introduce you to her.** _

Their eyes flickered to Gar. Raven grimaced, slightly. _He and I.....we have tried but Jillian and Tara are too deeply in him to make it work, and I am too much the daughter of Trigon for it work with me. We love each other, we will...spend time together, but not in that sense._

Her eyes turned to Tara Markov, who went up to Gar with a delighted squeal, the big-eyed dog transforming back to Gar's default self as he laughed and she laughed with the two of them together. Raven gave them a warm smile and turned to them.

_So....would you go with me tomorrow?_

"Go where?" Starfire's question was puzzled. "Azarath is...."

Raven nodded. _The Azarath that was is gone, the monster's toxin and the Unmaker's cleansing mean that it's a shattered wreck. My mother has a ranch, in Wyoming. A place where she looks after other poor lost souls._

She smiled warmly, a look both Starfire and Death seldom saw.

_Please? I don't have the courage to face her on my own and before I meet my aunt I want to see my mother again. It's been so long...._

They both nodded, and Raven pulled them to her, relaxing on Kori while Death let herself relax in turn. Kori saw the scars then and her face went pale and as Dream had done before her she stroked them carefully. She mouthed with sharp anger that made Raven's eyes open: "If I see the version of you that did this I'm going to teach her a lesson."

Death mouthed back: **_The you in that universe did._ **

She smiled, a bit relieved, and then pulled Death closer. It was not easy to hate her for what her brother had done, even if she hoped never to encounter Destiny of the Endless again so long as she lived.

She heard Raven's voice speaking quietly: Komand'r won't be in for another three days. She said tomorrow but the League is paranoid after something that happened on Demarest. She'll be held up in the Watchtower.

Starfire felt a bit of petty vindictiveness satisfied and purred in contentment as she relaxed into the same sleeping restfulness as Donna and her man and Kon and Tim. It was a lovely day, one meant for sleeping and for resting.


	8. Ranches and the last warlords of dead worlds:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven brings her girlfriends to meet her mother at Jackson Hole. 
> 
> Yeneli speaks with the last general of a dead world, and hatches new ambitions.

_TITANS TOWER, TITANS ISLAND:_

Breakfast had been surprisingly quiet that day. Raven knew that it was not that the Titans would be so protective of her to her face as to forbid her to leave so soon after her arrival, but they were all the same reluctant. Only telling them of where she was going, and more precisely whom she was going to see, and why, had stilled things. That her family was surprised that her mother had returned to Earth in the wake of the glorious day when her father was overthrown, and with her reunion with her old and surprised friend Bruce Wayne had built Jackson Hole was a thing of her own life, of which they knew little.

They were wary around Death but they were not afraid of her. Death had not taken gloved hands and an iron grip and dislocated their lives only to meekly retreat away, and them left to pick up the pieces. She had, for whatever reason, clearly fallen in love with at least Raven, and probably Starfire too. The memory of the bad years when the Titans had sustained enough fatalities Nightwing had taken the name and mulled disbanding the group left them hoping that Death remained well-disposed to them. Nothing they had seen from their return and that picnic had said otherwise.

Nor did Death sitting quietly and looking at Raven lovingly, quaffing a fine wine, and listening to the small talk and then the surprised statements and a loud "What the Hell?" from Vic when she'd spoken.

What had truly clenched it was the casual, not deliberate, way Raven grabbed both their hands and spoke of "introducing my girlfriends to my mother" and said so with a quiet smile on her face.

They knew those emotions, and Raven, who had known little luck in her life (and to her as to the other Titans, sex and love were different things and Raven had never had any problems getting _that_ , she had been a wee bit of a ladykiller in the superhero fraternity in the past) on the score of relationships, familial and otherwise, might see something better was happy in a way they had never seen her. The more cynical remembered the smiles from Malichor and were wary, especially after her disappearance, but they too kept quiet, for which Raven was grateful.

The meal had been too short and too long all at once, and then they were here, now.

"You ready for this?" Kori, her lovely, beautiful, adorable Kori asked her. Raven laughed, somewhat bitterly. "I'll never be ready for this."

Death just gave her an approving smile and nod, and put her hand on Raven's shoulder:

**_We're with you no matter what she says._ **

Raven bit her knuckle with nervousness and then vanished with them in a crackle of black light.

_Jackson Hole Ranch and Domestic Violence Shelter:_

She still went by Arella, after all these years. Ever since she had been drawn into that Church of Blood whose pastor with the undeniably gaudy outfit had spoken with words guttural and only partially human of deep secrets and the will of the Book of Destiny. Fate had brought there. A blind God had directed her to a bed and to the manifestation of the demon Trigon, to an act that scarred her soul and left wounds on her body, and brought forth the demon's Gem. A Gem who had sought to defy a fate that to her shame she had not thought could be. A Gem that had proven a stronger daughter than she ever had a mother, overthrowing the Demon, banishing it. Him.

That had turned her hair as indigo as her daughter's, her eyes likewise. A change she did not question overmuch. She had warded the place to make it invisible to the eyes of her material family, for there were questions she was still too afraid to answer, and the fear that Alice would reject her after everything.

Her girls were still sleeping when her wards pulsed in a specific pattern and seemed to unfold like the petals of a flower.

They were warded against most of her material family.

There was one they were permitted to let in.

She had last spoken to her daughter when the Titans had shattered her mirror and let out the shards of her soul and she had let the demonic part go on a rampage rather than let it back in, when she had remained living a life on the surviving food stores of ruined Azarath. That conversation had led her here, to this place.

It was six years ago, and her daughter had changed much since then. Her magic told her that she had come into contact with one of _them._ The Primordials, the Eternals. The living concepts called the Endless, of whom there were seven, children of TIme and Night. Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. She had heard of Death of the Endless from Trigon's boasting when he was within her, his telling her that she felt better than Death herself, that she was also stronger, for Death had reacted in fear and destroyed him and she was strong enough to endure.

Trigon gave her fear of the mightiest entities in creation. So in his own warped way did Nabu, the helm-thing that had twisted people into Doctor Fate. Much moreso, the Spectre, the Wrath of God given the _Wishmaster_ treatment. God as a Slasher villain. She did not like the implications for existence in that concept.

But if anything could get her to empathize with another being, knowing they'd suffered what she'd suffered at the hands of the Demon, even in part, that could do it. It made them part of a very small set of people, those who had seen Trigon the Terrible at his worst and had survived.

When the dark and white elements of Raven's soul dispelled, she was not surprised to see Starfire, for Raven had told her of her relationship with the beautiful alien, and beautiful was too mild a word. She was very surprised to see the other being, clad in black clothes, an umbrella on her shoulder, hair dark as night and eyes of infinite darkness, skin bone-hued and lips black as her hair and her eyes. To see her turn her face and look to her with caution that then saw her eyes widen and then looking away, ashamed.

So strange.

She looked at the concept of Life and Death themselves, a being that was rumored in the hidden works in Azarath's library, the _Magdalene Grimoire,_ the _Sound of Night Insects_ by Abdul Hazred, and she had learned much. Both the _Grimoire_ and the _Al-Azif_ spoke in detail of the Seven Endless (and the _Al-Azif_ had told her the other names of Trigon, Angra Mainyu, Ahriman, and the fuller nature of his own being that had amazed and horrified her to discover. She had read the chapters on Death when she was in her darker moods, hoping to summon and bind her to get her to grant her release, then.

They spoke of a being of ancient nature unlike others, hidden sorrows threading her that had only partially been glimpsed. She knew much more of Death's nature than anyone bar perhaps her daughter and the alien, Starfire, did.

Well, other than Death of the Endless herself.

And yet knowing all of that, of the stupendous power and omnipresent aspects of the being, of what she concealed behind that humanlike form, the way she turned her head away and tears flowed down her face, her head down was achingly like that of some of her girls when they'd arrived first.

Some of the Endless, Desire, Destiny, and Dream fully deserved the view that they were inhuman at best. Some, like Delirium, Destruction, and Death herself were said to be the most like humans. Looking at a being astronomically more powerful than the wizened crone Azar who had taken her in, given her a home and a new name and a new mission she was continuing even now, she did not think in the stupefied awe of her reading, seeing a being that seemed a young woman ashamed of a wrong that had not been her own doing, and she moved to her daughter and her companions.

She gave Starfire a warm smile and gasped in pain from the embrace, wheezing for a moment before giving her daughter a hug that was not quite as superhuman but certainly felt that way.

And then she turned to Death, and quietly raised a hand to put it at her chin, and the Endless looked at her.

"We've both been through bad things. At the hands of the same figure, even, I believe."

Her eyes flickered to Raven.

"You.....let me guess. You want me to meet the girlfriends?" Her hand still on Death's chin, a being capable of blinking out their world with a flicker of her eyes looking at her like the fearful teenage girl she appeared to be.

Raven nodded. "I do,"

She let Death's chin go and pointed to her home.

"Come in, I'm about to start on a small breakfast for me."

She smiled softly. "The girls have their own mini-kitchens. They can eat together or separately, depending on what they want."

In the house strode the Endless, the Demon's Daughter, and the Heir of Tamaran.

_Arella's Kitchen:_

Angela Roth had last been seen by her daughter in the white robes of an Azarathi Novitiate, not the deep blue of the full monks, the blue Raven had worn before replacing it with the black dress and cloak she now wore. Not the deep crimson red of Azar's Sari, the wizened crone wearing red specifically as a refutation of the _thing_ she had shown her, after the birth.

She had gone to her then, asking her what kind of benevolent God would let what happened to her happen in the lesser, human sense, or the cosmic horror that had befallen her. Azar had taken her to a hidden chamber, where the Goddess Azar's symbol stood, and she expected to see another gilded beautiful bird-headed statue. And instead she had seen a partially human thing with a dish-shaped face beneath a sagittal crest, for all that feminine in a cruel and cunning sense. Fanged teeth were marked in an over-wide leer and it sat on a throne like a dinosaurian skull, serrated horns visible, bloated in armor, the right hand turned up and metal worked into a pattern like a vortex, the left down on the jagged edge of bone that passed for a rest.

There was a malignant horror, an endless hunger from the thing that oozed from the metal and she stared in shock. Trigon, Ahriman, was horrid, but she half expected the statue to rise.

Azar looked at her and then she was on her knees, murmuring "Don'tletitgetup don'tletitgetup."

The bloated thing on the throne did not truthfully move, but she shuddered, as she heard Azar kneel beside her and shuddered further into her shoulders.

"That is the Goddess that lies at the core of our path. A being that promised paradise and delivers horrors. I saw it, once. It fought another being of its kind.....and was driven off, and the entity that fought it looked me in the eyes and did not kill me, and told me:

**_Destiny has laid a firm burden upon you, be strong enough to bear it. Alone of your kind you have seen your Goddess in person. You may serve what lurks beneath your creed as it is, or bring it to a higher place._ **

"For five hundred years since I have sought to do that. To change this place from a citadel of war against the Angra Mainyu to something better. I have taught my people to guard their souls, to shield them against the terrible darkness on the one hand, and the Outer Light in the other, the light of dead stars that gazes with malice and wishes to transform our souls that they may never truly die.

This is my burden. I made a mistake, once, as did my mother, and my grandmother, in the long millennia of our existence. Yet we all dance according to fate's tune, and there may come a time when this Azarath, the Azarath that is worth saving, shall hinge on two people. Yourself....and your daughter. I have lived five centuries but I shall not live forever. Thankfully. I've seen what comes of it."

Her eyes turned to the bloated thing on its throne.

"I will not live forever, and I will have ideas and compassion be my legacy. When it comes to it, when you are alone in the dark with but yourself for company, who are you? Angela Roth of Gotham and born in China? Arella of Azarath, Novitiate in the Eightfold Path? The Bride of Trigon or the mother of Rachel? Or someone else besides?"

The memory faded as she continued to work on the omelets she prepared, humming an old song of Azarath. Raven and Starfire waited patiently, Death merely contented herself with coffee. She remembered that of the Endless, Death did not drink, for she had _changed_ and did not know food or drink or the ways of the body as others did. It was a thing that left her strange to the sight. She was still shy. That she did not know what to make of it. She knew all too intimately the misery of being captive to the demon Trigon, to be a mere human in the eyes of a malevolent force. Yet this being, this unimaginably powerful thing that seemed human but was not, that looked lovingly at her daughter and at her alien girlfriend, reacted like a human being did. She had only met the Demon, and very briefly a being clad in white with a green hood, and knelt then, believing herself fit for execution.

The Spectre had looked at her and said:

**_Your punishment was already born to the world, and she has redeemed all existence, and proven herself mightier against the curse within her than I have with mine._ **

And in a single wrenching sensation, she had found herself here, and given the basis to build on, and even money and so many other things besides.

And there was the statue of the bloated and malevolent _thing,_ the Goddess that Azar had worshiped unthinkingly until she had seen it.

Now, as she brought steaming plates of omelets, a vegetarian one for Raven, and a meatier one for Starfire, she smiled at her daughter's warm smile, and Starfire's look of unabashed glee, understanding immediately why her shy empath was so drawn to her.

She then looked at Death,

"While they eat, can we talk?" 

The Endless nodded, and they left the two superheroes to eat.

\-------

Death was quiet, reclining against a wall, a boot against it. She seemed so quiet, still.

Angela had studied psychology deeply in Azarath and had learned empathy to a degree to match her daughter there, and even sorcery to a degree that reflected on the aftermath of bearing her daughter. It was nothing to her to see something that amazed her and left chills down her. Death, the warm and welcoming voice from beyond the grave, who divided what went before from what came after, had a set of issues to rival those of her daughter. Depression was one of them, if somewhat expected in the embodiment of Death, to a point. But not like this. There was a sense of weariness, a Solomonic "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" to it.

There was shame, and guilt, crusted in so many levels she wasn't sure what to make of it.

Some of it was indeed about what she knew Arella had seen. But not all of it.

And there were other things, some of which she could not understand (only fair given that even now Death was no doubt scattered across countless realities fulfilling her function). She saw flashes of a tapestry woven in slow and loving detail, images on images upon images.

Death looked at her, quietly.

**_You wanted to talk to me?_ **

"It was him, wasn't it, who hurt you.....that way?"

**_Not the only one who did. It all hurts, and it always hurts. In some realities, it's a mortal aided by my sibling, be it one of the Trenchcoat Brigade or Thanos of Titan. In a very unfortunate small, small percentage of realities it's Roderick Burgess. I can never forget it, and it's left its....scars._ **

Arella saw more completely the horrific damage on her right arm, wincing.

"He did that to you?"

She remembered the burns on her body, the claw-marks, the traces of his teeth gouging deeply into her shoulder. The searing into her souls from the eyes, the bones crushed by his grip. But nothing like the ripped flesh on her right arm, and the traces of an equally horrific gash on her back.

**_N-Not him._ **

Death's voice wibbled slightly, an edge of tears to it.

"I won't ask who, then."

Angela's face was careful as she gripped Death's chin to be sure they made eye contact. She could drown in those eyes, they were the most beautiful she had ever seen.

"He didn't hurt you for anything you did any more than he did me for anything I did."

**_I know. But you also know how....._ **

Angela nodded.

"I know more than I ever wanted to."

Her eyes flickered to the room where she could hear Raven and Starfire talking.

"Do you love her?"

**_I do. I......I do. My brother's machinations got me here, but....I love her. I love someone. I know what it is to love someone, to be loved._ **

"She is not easy to love, I think, at one level, but she is all too easy to do so. I learned to look at her and see my daughter, not him."

Death's smile was wan.

**_He wanted a version of her from me when he.....hurt me. When he tried to say my true name, that was when I....dispersed him. I wanted him destroyed but it was not time, said Destiny. He didn't see what happened. None of them did. I'm not sure if any of them know, or if I want them to. I've been the big sister all my life. My.....my very, very long life. When my younger brother left....he gets people, he gets us. It's natural to him. It's not to me. I've had to take his burdens as well as mine. So I can let them think I'm a happy go lucky type who has no real internal troubles besides feeling a little 'down', or I can admit that this action, which repeats itself ad nauseam in so many universes, thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty two times, because it is how he was dispersed and who did so and why, and others like it have traumatized me._ **

**_That I am weak enough to let it. I can if I wish assert my sphere and end the universe with a snap of my fingers. And so much more than that. I have always been able to do it. But facing him, I was too weak to stop it. I....I let him...._ **

She realized she was rambling, and then shut up, and then felt a deep stab of shame when the tears that had flowed since that time three years ago when she'd broken so deeply that the sword that dealt the wounds had cut her flowed again and she let herself hold and be held by Angela Roth in the way she'd long wished her own mother had held her. Angela's arms were warm around her, and she felt Death's trembling, and for a moment she did not see an entity that defined and trumped all existence, whose ill health had caused the very power that ignited the stars to break down.

She saw a woman who had needed support that a lover could not provide, and which she had given while having little of in return.

Behind the doors Raven and Kori talked for a time, enjoying the chance to just be, and to speak of what had happened in five years of absence. That time lapsed, eventually, and the two got up, knowing that the other women, most of whom were still sleeping, would be up soon.

They saw Death and Arella breaking off the hug and Death wiping her eyes, as Arella smiled and turned to them.

"Your girlfriend's a good woman, Raven. You brought her to the right place."

She turned to Starfire.

"I know enough of your past from what Raven told me."

Starfire stiffened, looking down at her shoe and scuffing it slightly.

"You're welcome here too. It's a place for lost souls with nowhere to go."

And then she strode deliberately to her daughter.

"You are one of the strongest people here, who I've ever met. You never stopped hoping even when I did. You always believed. This is a place for lost souls, my sweet daughter, but you have never been lost."

Her mother's smile was warm and Raven trembled.

"I never hated you. Your father....we both hate him, and are unashamed to hate someone who deserves it. He was a monster. A monster that you drove from this universe."

Raven held her mother as she'd wished to do in those long and lonely years in Azarath. and felt something of an emptiness in her own soul pass, feeling the mirror of this in her mother's.

The girls in the ranch woke up not long after, and the three women spent a long and lovely day meeting women who were awed to meet a real for true alien, like Superman (and Starfire was deeply flattered to be compared to a hero, not only of her world, but of all worlds. Raven was quieter, afraid. Her demonic heritage was already known from the Days of Stone, and still moreso after the time when Death had stopped for years. Yet none of the girls, even the devoutly religious ones in long skirts, some with hijabs and two with long crosses, were afraid.

They did not see the monster, they saw the girl who had saved the world from an apocalypse of a truly Biblical nature.

The third, a small and very, very pale Goth brought a deep chill into the room, yet she too was welcome. She only said that her name was "DiDi' but they knew one of their own in her and surprisingly, in Starfire's case.

Starfire and 'DiDi' shared their stories in a circle, what of them they were willing to say, and for the girls to learn that a hero who fought off alien invasions and was known to be one of the most powerful and effective heroes in the business spoke of her sister's betrayal, of the long and painful years in slavery, and Raven and DiDi held her hands as she spoke with a wavering voice and admitted some of the deeper sorrows she had endured.

DiDi too spoke, of a deeply dysfunctional family, of her inability to get along with her siblings, of the breaking of it when her younger brother left. She spoke a bit of her own sorrows but then she froze, _her body crawling with the heat of the reddish skin and the glowing yellow eyes, and the deep voice that had rasped fell secrets in her, of what it was to be on her back, young, so very, very dreadfully young and raw and trusting._

 _The memory of that first syllable and the smile on his face and then the agonized scream of raw rage and black energy burst from her and the demon stared in mute horror and then he was no more._ She was there. In that first universe, and when it was done she'd lain there in utter agony, and then she'd made a fateful decision that echoed infinitely, as hatred was one thing, but this, this was too far and too much.

She was frozen unknown to her for a good five minutes, catatonic, and the women who had endured similar things knew what it was and they waited patiently. Raven, the healer and the empath known, did not touch her but sent her calm love and understanding and it passed and Death blinked and shuddered and held herself, rocking.

The stories stopped then and there was only the quietness of women together, supporting each other under the big sky of Wyoming as the bloody sunset slipped and the skies lit up with the infinite stars. Eventually they went inside and they all slept, Raven, Death, and Starfire together in a bed, Death letting herself slip from the exhaustion and turmoil deep into her brother's realm.

_The Palace of the Dreaming, Throneroom of Dream of the Endless:_

When she appeared in his realm Dream froze, on his throne. His power was absolute in this realm, he was its architect and its God through and through. Nothing could happen or begin to be without his will, or his assent, and yet there was Death, standing in the formal dress from that day, holding herself and looking down with shame.

**_I'm sorry, little brother. I ran away. I told you to remember you weren't alone and look at me. Running away. Slipping in part of the universe into anger and in part of it into an abyss even the Dark Dreamer could not escape._ **

Dream stood down from his throne and walked to her, cautiously. They'd seen her at the conclave but none of the Endless truly trusted that Death would not run again, that she would not flee. She had fled and they had learned....things. Destiny had disclosed to them more of the truth, talking individually, all of them save Del, to whom they were trying to spare this harshness if they could. Dream looked at her and Death's eyes caught him and the knowledge made her eyes widen and then she ducked her head and sought to leave. His hand caught her shoulder and she froze and the look of utter fear on her face gave him pause.

**We don't judge, you, sister. We have never been good at acting like like a family, but we are one. We love you. We got lost in our games and our functions, and we forgot. That was what you really meant to show me when you threw that bread at me, wasn't it?**

Death wept, then, rasped: **_Yes._ **

Dream did not hug his sister, sensing it was not entirely a good idea, and instead brought her to sit by him, conjuring pigeons, and with a wry smile, forming bread.

_**Meant a lot to you, didn't it?** _

**Of course it did** , Dream gave voice to a soft laugh. **You reached out to me, you acted like my sister, not the idea of Death speaking to the governor of the time in the paths of sleep.**

They fed the birds, which cooed, and a peaceable silence followed.

**He'll find you, soon.**

Death looked at him warily.

**_Who?_ **

**The Prodigal.**

_**Dream**_ , she sighed. _Don't send him to me like I'm a pity case like Del was._

Dream snorted. **The furthest thing from it, sister dearest. He cares, too. We all do. Even our parents.**

At that Death couldn't resist a bitter laugh that turned into a weeping sound as she held her chin on her knees, bread falling to the ground.

Then she heard a voice low and smoky and majestic, one that could go into the Dreaming and yet not be tied within the whim of its master. She felt a hand cold and warm at the same time on her shoulder and froze, her jaw tight.

**Your brother's right. I did not know what to say, then. Then I saw.....what happened. I could not let it pass without telling others, and figuring out what had to be. It was bad enough when your younger sister's heart was truly broken for the first time and she came to me, as bitter as I am of what happened with your father as if I of all people had an answer to heartbreak. There are no answers, even for those like us. But I hurt her, and she fled, and she became so damaged she needed mortals to free her. I made a mistake then and I did not care, and it was wrong.**

Death could not bring herself to look, the memories of all the rejections sharp.

Her mother drew her in and she dreamed of being held by her own mother as she was by Arella, letting herself believe the dream, wanting to believe it, like the hole in her heart would be healed.

That morning she woke up away from the bed, held, in arms that were not those of Starfire or Raven, or Arella.

She did not know that the small hours of the morning had lapsed when something, no some _one_ more ancient than the Endless had made a physical manifestation on the planes, as her daughter slipped from the Dreaming. She had crept in and the weight of her presence cast its shadows, a protective embrace on Jackson Hole stronger than most eyes that could have stared on it in malice. Anything that could pierce it would have done so aiming at the rest of the world, not at it specifically. She had slipped into the bed and picked up her daughter, who was hers and yet predated her by unfathomably ancient standards, and held her, letting her rest in what still seemed a dream.

Raven and Starfire woke up later, as the rays of dawn crept and their stomachs rumbled, all ten of them. Raven looked confused for a moment at only having another woman in her bed, and then she saw the stout woman made up of a night sky, holding her daughter who slept soundly, as if the deep hurts that had been exposed and were healing were soothed. Raven's eyes were wide and she was awed, for she saw something that very few mortals ever saw. Night, the mother of the Endless, holding her daughter.

She smiled at them quietly and Death woke up with rapt wonder, as if she was living her own dream come true, and Night gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead and whispered something into her ear that they did not hear, and gave Death a hug and then she was curled up in a chair, staring blankly, knowing what happened and uncertain what if anything she was to do with it.

Death remained staring into space as if she'd seen a ghost through the next day, oblivious to the teasing from Raven and Starfire, only coming out of it when they arrived at Titans Tower, the day that Blackfire was due to arrive back.

_House of Zod Operating Base:_

It had been a space station once, orbiting a yellow Sun. When the Phantom Zone's projectors broke down it had taken less than five human eyeblinks for it to have briefly become a charnel house at the hands of Zod and his supporters. Then the loathsome beast Mongul had unleashed his assault and taken his woman. 

Now Faora was returned, and in the fanaticism of her gaze and her over-wide smile he felt a small, or not so small, set of shivers. Faora had been an infamous serial killer before they had met in the Zone and become lovers. He did think of her as his woman, but she was his woman in the sense that a pet tiger, as akin to a habit of gaudy and tasteless sub-Kryptonians on Earth, was the pet of those who owned it.

She gave him that smile and then went to luxuriate in her powers returned, restored, expanded.

He turned to one of the two beings that had returned her to him. She seemed humanoid, though he knew this was a form taken for his adjustment (and part of him felt bile rising at the thought but then he pondered this one and the other had raided Mongul, who'd casually smacked them all around and taken Faora, perhaps wisdom meant conciliating such a strange entity). Her skin was black, darker than the void of night and veined with reddish elements that burned like fires, even his enhanced form sweating slightly in her presence.

For all else that she seemed, she had power, and he felt it. A heady thing. There was a blade in her scabbard, a blade that drew his eyes. He could feel its nature. It was a malignant thing, a star hammered and rewoven into the form of a blade.

"What is that blade?"

It was his first question to the entity, whose hand grasped the hilt with a wary hostility.

**_A work of the forges of Muspelheim, of the very hands of my uncle, Surtr, by whose hand the Gods will burn and the world that was shall be no more._ **

Her voice rasped and it cracked the air with a heat that even yellow-sun enhanced lungs had to work to not be overwhelmed by this close to proximity. 

_**I call Deathbane, for it slew Despair of the Endless, and it has nearly taken the life of Death of the Endless twice now. My former lover wants to end, you see. The Endless wants to have an ending, immortality wishes to be mortal.** _

Her face was human but what was between those parted lips was not.

Dru-Zod froze for a moment.

" _That_ is the blade that slew Despair of the Endless?"

She nodded. **_And twice nearly slew Death._**

"And you said Death wants to die?"

She nodded.

Zod smiled.

"Well then."

Yeneli's gaze turned to him more carefully, as he leaned forward to speak to her, his hands on the armor around his knees, digging in enough that the metal crunched, slightly.

"I think we can work on a few arrangements. Her function killed my people, and vengeance against the son of El will be much more....amusing...if he cannot die."

Yeneli's eyes narrowed.

**_You have my interest._ **


	9. Reunions and shadow-sides:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blackfire returns to Earth for a tense step in familial bonding. 
> 
> On Earth 616, the Death of the other multiverse makes a decision. 
> 
> Yeneli seeks a copy of the Al-Azif from the library of the Citadel.

_The Citadel, outer defenses:_

Her talks with Dru-Zod (and the need to wait on Faora recovering the damage done to her by War-world before joining the House of Zod in all this) had given Yeneli new purpose. She was surprised that so brutal and amusing a figure as Lobo seemed to regret the loss of a partner, but relieved that it didn't require more than a small brawl for it to go anywhere. Zod had spoken of lore of the Seven Endless, and she knew of the Magdalenian Grimoire from her experiences in that book, and all the interactions of the Dreaming unraveling. So close she had come to freedom then, when Roderick Burgess had set events in motion. But the Grimoire itself was not the only such book, and it was a living thing with a morbid sense of humor, prone to annoy and to undermine the efforts of those who sought to wield it. 

The Al-Azif, in all its permutations, was distinct. Invariably it appeared on Earth and in libraries across the Galaxy, for it spoke of ancient wisdom that predated by long orders of magnitude even the Guardians, and the lore on the Endless in its volumes was greater than others. And they were not the only entities of which it spoke in truth. The stern and cruel warlords of Kelzhandar, the likes of which had twice tried to devour their multiverse, the many-angled Hounds of Tindalos. The Dreaming itself, including such of its realms as Kadath in the Cold Waste and where the Gods of Earth dwelt, even those as menacing and cruel as the children of Apokolips and as warm and yet no less warlike as those of New Genesis. And it spoke of the Old Ones, the Cycles of Xoth and of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key, the creator of the creators.

She cared only for two bits of lore. One, that of the children of Kelzhandar and the being so akin to her, because such a being gave her pause for concern. She remained active and yet they were alike enough that this warlike god might decide to take offense at something broaching on its existence and to end her. And the other, of course.....was Volume L, rendered in Olaus Wormius's translation as 'The Wings of Death.'

The greatest single collection of lore on her old lover known in any given universe, the kind of knowledge no doubt used by the monster to try to devour and absorb the universes. Her lover had rejected her, not once, but many times. In the past she had felt anger and wanted to win her love back but she knew she had lost, now, to of all things a demoness. A whelp, a little mongrel half-breed sired by the Zeus method on an easily deceived little waif.

That stung. She could lay low universes, and she was rejected for a creature that in relative terms was a fledgeling.

It had been her own principles that had led her to reject Death, and to try to kill her twice. And yet the nearness of that, the anger that burned with her literally as her re-engineered Kryptonian ship blew open a hole in the derelict defenses left since the victory of the Omega Men over the Citadel, stayed with her.

She did not need a suit to guard against the vacuum of space, and propelled herself between her ship and the Citadel zone, hoping that something, no matter how pathetic, of the old Psion Empire had survived the cataclysm that had overcome it.

From a golden jewel-adorned scabbard she drew a blade that lit with fire in the howling element of decompression, and then she raised her other hand and clenched it, fire-magic sealing the ship.

The walk from there was long, and boring, nothing rising to challenge her. She could see the markings left by starbolts and the sheer unleashed power of a Guardian of the Universe, and she was impressed. Komand'r had won her freedom by helping to tear down the empire for which she'd sold her world and to which she'd sold her sister as a slave. The broken bodies had rotted to bones and she could smell the odor of decay of the distinct species within the fallen soldiers, and did not care. Her blade gave them pyres and a dignity that the Omega Men had not given them, the metal behind her becoming molten and given her march a hellish image.

Onward she strode, until she reached the edge of the library and then sheathed her blade, and raised her fist back. She waited, for a moment. If the Citadel or the Omega Men had left anything.....she waited for a good half an hour by Earth standards and then a single smashing of her fist against the door caused it to fall with molten heat, and she strode in.

She was trained as a mage, so it was no great task to find the fifty-nine volumes of the Necronomicon that ranged from very slender to thick tomes that could have been an ideal torture method for a certain kind of mindset. They occupied an entire bookshelf by themselves due to this varying size, and she casually wielded a spell that summoned them all into one of her storage dimensions, and then curled her lip. A derelict library that contained so many ancient secrets.....

She strode along the shelves of grimoires out of curiosity.....and then paused at one. There was an ankh symbol on it, and writing that made her lips curl into a cruel smile.

She did not look behind her to see the small child-like being with a rainbow mohawk and heterochromic eyes that materialized behind her for a moment in a kaleidoscopic fog, nor did she see the impish smile on the entity's face as she laughed at taking the volume and her breath caught at the title. A means to destroy the one she wanted destroyed more than anything else.

She vanished then, not before taking her blade and igniting the library in a casual act of vandalism that destroyed so much of the most ancient relics of the dawn-times such that nothing could ever rebuild them again.

The child-like entity did not burn, she sang and hummed, and then when the entity had returned to her ship she smiled, giggling.

_ShE wOn'T huRT AnY oF Us EvEr AgAIn._

Delirium of the Endless just loved when mortals took her gifts, and sought to wield them as they would Especially mortals that killed one of her sisters and almost killed her big sister and left that scar on her heart. She remade the World-Destroying fires into an orchestra of the damned and pirouetted in the ashes of dead knowledge, singing a nonsense-song. 

_Omega Men ship, Earth Orbit:_

"I'm nervous," Komand'r could not resist admitting this. So many years of struggle against the Citadel and it had fallen. Time to heal wounds with Tamaran and to make her peace with the decisions its people made, to get to know her brother. Vengeance against her old self for the building of her new one. And now this. 

Lianna the Oan simply smiled at her softly.

"You'll be fine. If it doesn't work out here, I am assembling a new team to meet other crises, and you will always be welcome there."

Blackfire hated the tears that came to her eyes then, the simple meaning of acceptance of the kind her sister had always taken for granted and that, when denied, had led her to want to burn down the places that did not welcome her nor want her to welcomed.

She gave hugs to those of her team that welcomed them and nods and/or handshakes to those that did not, and then willingly stepped into the teleportation device.

As one her team told her 'Good luck.'

_Titans Island:_

Koriand'r, Raven, and Death waited on the outskirts of the island, away from the Tower. Kori had been disappointed by her sister far too many times to risk it going wrong again near the tower. Her right hand held Raven's, her left held Death's, and she drew strength from their presence. She could not resist a shiver of anticipation and that cruel thing hope that flowered ever anew no matter how many times there was disappointment.

Raven and Death did not speak, but she did not need them to. She only needed their presence.

And then the flash of light and her sister stood before her, in a full bodysuit, long thigh-highs of Tamaranean make with matching sleeves and bands of metallic substances of hardened promethium, the hardest metal known to the universe.

"Sister," she spoke, willing herself to let go of Raven and Death's hands and to stride forward. Her voice was cold with a wavering tone to it, and she did not want to let herself feel the hope she did that the haunted being she'd spoken to had really meant her words.

Then she was pulled into a hug as bone-crunching as her own and realized for the first time what it was for someone like Dick or Wally to take them (and her admiration for her friends grew then) as Komi said "Kori, it has been too long." Starfire stared at her sister in mute confusion, slipping into Starfire of the Titans, the beautiful berserker warrior who fought with great vengeance and furious anger, the righteous fury that gave her the power to fight against those who sought to harm her friends and her family. Easier to be Starfire than Koriand'r, who had always loved her sister and wished to see her love her.

Komi spoke next: "The Citadel has fallen." Her smile was wan, and sad. "I was a part of that. It was my first step to atone for everything I did. Tear down the evil I worked for, seeing what it was....."

She hugged Kori again with equal strength. "Auron's beard, sis, I did not know how awful it was for you to be there because I did not want to know. I know how often I've broken your trust. I have no expectation of it, and I suspect whatever love there was died when Madame Rouge emulated our brother's form and all that meant..." she sighed.

"But I want to show you that I do, so we can be a family again."

She did not look at Kori, afraid in her own right that where Tamaran accepted but did not extend the acceptance past a point that Kori, her sister and the only one who'd ever loved her unconditionally would reject her.

When she was given a hug in turn she heard Kori whisper in her ears: "A single slip-up, sister, and we'll see which of us can be more ruthless when it comes to it." She went pale, gulped, and nodded, and Kori slipped back, a sweet smile on her face.

"Well, then, come on in."

Komi floated behind Koriand'r, and then her eyes went to the woman in black jeans and a black top, and she put her hand to her mouth to fight an initial burst of nausea. The wound on that woman's arm reminded her a little too strongly of the necrotic weaponry wielded by the Citadel in its worst and most desperate last days. The scenes of hardened soldiers of multiple races screaming and their bodies falling apart made her freeze. The three women saw this and understood and gave her time to wait and to be patient, before letting her float back with them.

The Titans did not exactly welcome her with open arms, but....as she looked around, they didn't say no.

For now, she would be content with that.

_Realm of Death, connected to Earth-616:_

Much had changed here, recently. Her Earth had never had a kind of Crisis akin to that that her annoying counterpart who had proven to have much deeper troubles than she could possibly fathom had had. It had never had its very history and what made it itself rewritten from highest to lowers levels, and yet now it had. What was worse, she had fallen ill and nearly died and had to be bailed out by mortals, and in particular by a triad of mortals. T'Challa the King of Wakanda, Reed Richards of the Baxter Building...and Bruce Banner. The monster-man.

That irritated her more than most. What was more irritating still was that she actually liked Bruce Banner, insofar as she liked any mortal other than her own beloveds, Thanos and Wade. He had a monster within him, a thing of mortal make that laid low gods on the regular. A thing she quite approved of, in all truth. It had even fought her beloveds on equal terms. And yet T'Challa of Wakanda and Reed Richards knew enough of the esoteric arts to shield themselves against her irritation.

Poor Doctor Banner, she reflected on her throne, quaffing the reddish ambrosia from her pool. I really should send, if anyone, Richards. He would make quite a bit more entertainment and he'd spare my counterpart more of the backblow of her own folly. Oh, well.

Her hand, once skeletal, now had flesh on it, flesh as pale as her own counterpart. She had quietly taken her face in all but name, at points, instead of the other one she'd worn to appeal to her first beloved. Wade loved this one, in a grim irony, precisely because he owned the comics that her counterpart was known in in this universe (minus the few times she'd appeared there directly). It bothered her more than she wanted to admit that neither of her other forms truly met his needs but that was life.

_Earth-616:_

Bruce Banner's first inkling of what would become one of the strangest incidents in his entire life was when grim shadows rose around him with a terrible cold. 

He barely had the time to get out "Oh Fu-" before finding himself brought to the Crossroads of Infinity.

"Oh fuck, not again!"

And then reality _shifted._

 _Earth-48:_

A rift opened over Gotham City, in a part of the city where monsters that still had eyes like dead stars and cackled in the voice of a virus haunted the place where the shadows dared not go. The rift dropped a screaming man in a panic, the man falling straight into the street.

Misshapen swollen entities with burning eyes and thick voices and lolling tongues moved in a semi-gorilla like fashion, toward the hole in the street. They did not pause, though they should have, when a massive green hand burst from the hole. Nor did they halt when the hole erupted around a towering green entity whose face was a mask of pure and unhindered _rage._

" **Hulk.....smash**." 

And then the giant _moved._

By the time the Batman and company arrived at the scene Gotham was finally clear of the last traces of the monster's infection of parts of its place, the bodies of the dead torn asunder in horrific fashions. Ordinarily the Batman would have pursued such a person for murder, but aware of what precisely the transformation truly was.....it was a very rare time where Bruce wanted to pin a medal on someone who found the last twelve Horrors around him and proceeded to put them all out of their misery.

There were two massive footprints in the asphalt and a hole that had seemed human-sized and then cracked around.

That the footprints were human and unclad were why Bruce did not immediately think of Doomsday.

That whatever it was had the power to do _that_ meant that it did not take him long at all to call in the incident to the League and request a meeting.

_Jump City:_

Raven froze. She felt an emotion of such purity and strength that she had no idea how anything even partially human could feel it. _Rage._

Rage strong enough that she froze when she realized her own cape was taking on a reddish hue and shivered. She had not needed to meditate in years, but whatever _that_ was had her quietly excuse herself from Kori and Komi's awkward comedy of manners (and Gar quietly videotaping it on his cellphone, which ordinarily would have led her to morph him and send him to his room if it was anything else but here she actually felt Komi and Kori might appreciate it later if it actually did work out) and slip to her room. Death noticed her disappearance with a cocked head and then shrugged. People were allowed to have their secrets. 

Instead she just quietly sat and sipped her drink, listening to how Komi was trying to explain the complexities of what the Vegan system was and was not to a Wally and Vic who kept having trouble getting parts of it while displaying a remarkable patience.

She'd felt a brief rift created by her counterpart in Gotham City but that was nothing especially unusual.

She shrugged, slightly, and went on sipping her drink, unable to resist a smile when she saw Komi looking at Kori at one point with a cautious smile of an emotion that Komi barely understood. It was like her, that first time, after her taking the decision to become more friendly, learning that Dream, with whom she'd been so distant for so long as with everyone else, was the only person in existence she'd dared believe would love _her_ as _her._ The memory of that moment and the way Komi's expression, the little motions of her lip, her pointer fingers clenching slightly, the small shifts in her feet and her thighs fidgeting as if she was uncertain it was real. As if she was afraid her sister would turn on her at any moment.

She leaned forward slightly, Komi seeing her and looking to her warily.

**_You're too nervous, Komand'r. Give it time. You may not be used to being loved or having people love you, but if you give them the chance you'll see what a blessing that truly is._ **

Komi mouthed words to her in Tamaranean, "You know what it is to be here?" 

She mouthed back: **_I do. It took me a long time to believe anyone would want to love someone like me, especially after...._** for a moment her hand went to an ugly scar on her chest that made Komi start, wondering what kind of weapon had done _that. **You're not alone. You'll figure out just how much that's true.**_

Kori had seen this and then when Komi's face met her warily, she just smiled warmly and reached over to squeeze her sister's left wrist, and Komi relaxed, a deep exhale, and let herself slink into the couch enjoying this. She could really have a family after all.


	10. Of the Mysteries of She Who is Before and After, The Spirit Whom The One-God Prophets claim is Death:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An excerpt of Volume L of the Al-Azif, the writings of the Prophet Abdul Hazred, to whom the Ancient Ones spoke and disclosed secret wisdom.

_An excerpt of pages twenty through twenty-three of volume fifty of the Al-Azif, concerning the last of the Seven Primordials, the other six covered in Volume 49, Concerning the Sprites known as the Endless and Their Spheres._

Of all the manifold secretes disclosed to me by that which assumes ten thousand names and is known in this world as Nephren-Ka, the Pharaoh of Shadows, whom was sealed within a terrible mastaba with great rites of potency by the wizards of Pharaoh Merneptah, whom sought to lay waste to the scions of Israel and in so doing failed, the strangest are these concerning these seven scions of Time and Night. As the revelations in the book of the Sprites of the Endless showed, Time and Night are both concepts in the rawest sense and beings of unfathomable age and potency, whose marvels define the very writ in which the Elder Ones are made to operate in this set of worlds linked by the World-Tree. 

In the prior notations the very nature of this sprite, her being has been shown to be more than Death, the name by which mortals choose to see her. She is Life as she is Death, by her will is life renewed as it ends, and in her absence there would be only an eternal now of endless torment that would never cease, until the stars are right and the Dark Dreamer rises from his crypt and what is bad becomes worse.

She is absolute and awe-inspiring, a small aspect of a greater entity of the Outer Gods, those seven entities whose function it is to provide the coherent nature of the Daemon Sultan's eternal night. Third among them is Death the Greater, sister to the twin faces of He who dictated to me these truths. The twin faces of the Crawling Chaos, lord and master of the material world are the beginning, an Death is the ending, in whose gaze the eternal ends, and by whom the immortal becomes mortal. With such elements to her, it might be supposed that a being whose nature is cyclical, in an endless existence worthy of the name to whom the lives even of those she calls brother and sister are temporary, would be without any weaknesses, and yet as He has told me, it is not so.

In the very beginning of the beginnings there was a force of unknown nature that struck the very heart of Death itself, and in that moment her agonies came near to consuming her and entrapping her in a great silence. Some have said this force akin to the realm of fire known to the men of the North, the World-Destroyer Kingdom whose Lord the Black King with his sword of fire is promised to burn the worlds to ashes when all is done that new life may grow from them. To me it is proof of the greatest secret, that which lieth at the heart of Irem the City of Pillars and its wonders:

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even Death shall die.

Aye, no portion or incarnation of Death is truly endless nor immortal, for it is the nature of the divider of the before from the after to end, and so is it held. Yet this portion of the entity is unlike others, for where other shapes of Death, the woman in the robe, the lord in the trench coat, or even the skeleton that speaks with a tongue of the children of Guiney Afrik, all can perish, it is said that this one is Death's eternal implacability, in affable shape that disguises that it is the most ruthless and remorseless form of this principle.

Yet in truth when the stars become right and that which sleeps within its Necropolis is raised, it is this portion of Death that shall be broken on an altar by the Dreamer as a recompense to the Outer Gods, an offering by fire to the greater Death, that this portion of her being be relieved from an intolerable torment. This is the first of three fates that could truly end her, and in all that He has revealed to me and She likewise, I have seen no alternatives that show otherwise.

There are but two other forces that could end the Endless. All her kin, and her ancestors, as noted in the annals and characteristics of the Sprites are powerful yet vulnerable. Hers is a curse of endurance and yea, it is a curse as dictated by forces beyond her Writ. Where all else changes, she remains eternal and unchanged, and nothing that seeks to reshape her or to alter her fate may do so until the Dreamer awakens. She is more ancient than the most ancient of things, she has seen the Source Wall at its foundation in the dawn-times and it is her actions in the great cycle that shape it and grant it its potency. 

Woe to those who seek to delve into either of these paths, for hers is that which defines and trumps all existence and holds it together, and her torments and sorrows are those of the life that she gives, and that which she ends, for it is her curse not to love too little but to love too much, that all life know that there is one being in existence who gives it understanding and compassion and yea, the sense that it has a value in itself. To destroy her, to not merely unmake her but to kill her, would be to damn existence to unravel and to the rising of the Old Ones in truth, for it is her that keeps the stars fixed in their abode that the countless vingtillions of years of the slumbers of the Elder Gods remain so, in the time since the Dark Dreamer stormed the throne of the Gods and was cast falling from Heaven like lightning to the space that would become the Earth and the Seas.

To seek to undo this would be to accelerate the course of events, for it is a fixed point as with the Death of the Gods of Earth's Dreaming, when Olympus shall fall, the Fourth World shall become silent tombs for the Highfather and the King of the Dark Ones, when Asgard and the Nine Realms shall burn in Surtr's fire, and when the demon Trigon shall at last ascend to his rightful destiny, twice denied, and the third attempt shall see his true destiny. All that is shall fade, and in the very distant times what is so for the works of mortals of Earth and of those worlds whose destinies are yoked here shall be so for Existence.

Death, sister to the Lord of Ten Thousand Faces, shall awaken the Daemon Sultan and all that is shall be as if never had it been.

Death, sister to the Endless, second of Seven, sustains that portion of Existence which is within these secrets' remits, and in her absence there would be a great Nothingness.

Yet for those lost and damned and mad enough to pursue, there are but two means to end that which cannot die, and which is beyond all else.

It is said that of Death's wings there is that which would destroy her were the flight feathers to be severed. To take the first flight feather in a wing and to enscribe her true name upon it would grant one absolute command of the Endless, and were the order given to her to end her own existence she would comply. Only the very thing that brought her to near true-death could end this, and where the blade that slew Despair of the Endless may be found none know. Were such forces held against each other they would negate each other by their presence, for each has a power that should not exist, and yet does so.

The other is-

\------

Yeneli stared hard at that page, and her hand went to the hilt of her blade, and then she had a very cold and cruel smile cross her face, as she moved her gauntlet off and with a slight slice from one of her nails cut off that portion of the page where the words in Arabic enscribed on parchment in blood, that which Hazred had learned to conjure for its purposes gleamed with her reflected fires. Such a simple matter in itself.

Find a shard of that force which could annihilate anything that was, and find a means to, when awakening it, direct it straightforwardly at Death herself. She had read those other passages, of the Unmaker and of her force and her focus. She could destroy _anything_ and the proof of this was that in these discussion of weaknesses those entities without so convenient a weakness as the Elder Sign or Kryptonite or cold iron could be destroyed by this.

That only left the two problems of how one could find this, and what it would mean to cross beyond her multiverse into the wider sphere of existence.

It was an unstoppable force, and an immovable object all in one, and the sheer audacity of what was there....

Her finger brushed into her chin, fangs gleaming with a magma-hue.

Death had rejected her and would never consider there to be an effective rationale for the blade in her heart twice, the second with deliberate intent to kill. In Muspelheim such was the price of small things, but to something as weak and fragile as Death ultimately was.....

Her nail was a small triangle of fire against obsidian, her skin taking on a glass-like appearance that shone with that inner heat as her lips parted and a low draconic rumble echoed from her mouth.

She had rejected Death out of spite and then too late knew regret when she changed, and nothing could undo what she had done.

Yet.....

Her sword slipped out of its scabbard and she studied the runes on it, and the reflection of her face, which for a moment was human-like with the cracked spiderwebs of magma-veins in obsidian, little veins of bright red and eyes to match, hair of flowing rock down the back of he face.

Zod only wanted vengeance against first Mongul and then to draw in Clark Kent into eternal torment from which nothing could free him. He was mad, in all truth. None who'd seen the results of the end of Death's function when reality had near come unglued would be so sanguine about the experience expanded in this way. He did not realize with what or whom he'd made his bargain, and in truth she had no desire to inform him.

Her eyes stared at her reflection, at the small scars on her cheeks that she let shine without the glamour. When she'd stabbed Death the second time her wings had cut her face, a spasm of desperate resistance and then she'd ripped the blade out and slammed Death on the floor and begun to expand the wound with her hand when the transformation had begun, and the last sight she'd seen was the look of deep wounded hurt on Death's face, the understanding of how in deadly earnest she was.

No, there was no forgiveness for that.

There was.....

She smiled, her fangs shining against the blade with a set of triangular sharp teeth.

There was possibility. Possibilities.

Her blade briefly blazed into light and she saw the floor become molten around her, and grinned further.

This blade had almost done the deed twice. Perhaps she wouldn't need anything else, and in the end, it would just be this.

There were other grimoires she'd studied, ones that revealed a means to strengthen its power beyond what it already had. And if a few worlds of worthless detritus died to strengthen her blade and to grant her power to do the third time what she had failed to do the first and the second, well......

Warworld was doomed, though it did not know it. Faora would recover and it would be the first offering by fire to draw in the power of the damned.

An image stared at her from a grimoire. A great quarterstaff with a hammer-like edge, images of faces with perpetual screams worked in and an aura of menace. It relied on the souls of the damned as a power source and it had granted power to match that of the kind of force that in a single will had sought to devour the Fifty One worlds and to match it as equal.

Her nail dug in deep near her lip. Yes, possibilities.

The fire faded away and the runes still gleamed red-hot.

Her conjurations permitted her clear sight. Faora was hovering in the yellow sun lamp, her bones were now back beneath her skin, the bruises covering much of her anatomy from below her breasts to her knees were receding from a painful looking black element with gangrenous like elements of decay to light brownish-green. She was nude, the better to increase her healing, and she could see Zod looking at the window with a pained look in his eyes. Weak. They were all weak. Love did not make people strong, nor just. It was a weakness and a sickness in the soul.

She would teach this miserable world this, and Mongul and his son and daughter would be the first ones to learn that lesson.

The runes went to simple grooves and markings in the metal, and then she sheathed the blade and reclined against her bunk, modified by her magic to take her weight no matter what mass she manifested with any given moment. Her eyes kept traversing the page. It seemed such an improbable thing, but then it did make sense. Death was a product of Time first and foremost, so a shard of Time's own power in a fulgurite would, logically, be able to do this. Yet something did trouble her.

If her dear lover had truly wanted to die, she would have tried virtually everything. Had she tried the time-fulgurite?

The fragment of the Necronomicon was placed at her side and she put her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. She did not need to sleep, and she did not dare dream, lest her presence be drawn into the realm that had held her for so long.

Her boots clunked against each other as she let herself imagine the day when the worlds would burn and Death's body would fall by her blade, and the last sight in her eyes would be anger and then peace. One last gift.....and then, perhaps, she might transform into another Endless and my wouldn't _that_ be amusing.

\---------

_Jump City:_

Raven had gone back to meditating for a couple of hours a day as news proliferated of a strange new monster quite literally hopping around the Earth. The most improbable thing about it was that it resembled nothing so much as the Behemoth, the blue creature from that alternate world so akin to the Marvel Universe (which by a collective will the heroes of the Fifty-One worlds were keeping the true physical reality thereof secret, lest that awareness draw in monsters of another world on top of all the ones here). It was the Hulk himself, leaping around. 

Where in his own world people would not resist provoking the Hulk, here the Hulk was left alone, and so there was surprisingly little damage rather than a rampage through cities, and the only times there was something different were when he twice encountered very powerful supervillains with physical strength on their side. At least that's what Grodd and the Cyborg-Superman had thought about themselves. When the Flash family and Captain Marvel, who'd been hunting the Cyborg-Superman after he'd escaped his custody in the wake of the strange rift that had appeared over Gotham City, appeared to find them they were beaten unconscious, visible dents remaining in the Cyborg-Superman's metal, and only his telekinetic power preventing Grodd from being a quite literal furred bloody smear on the pavement.

The thing was hopping across the United States, largely unharmed, and had been doing so over days. What it did during the night none could predict, yet the sheer empathic presence of the beast was overwhelming to Raven, and she couldn't not meditate for hours.

It had meant Kori had more time to spend with Komi, though the two were still awkward and walking around eggshells.

And it meant that Death took it on herself to grudgingly connect to Gar Logan, whom she'd disliked for reasons she was never quite sure to place.

After quietly watching him and Tara Markov in more public spaces it slowly dawned on her why. Gar concealed pain beneath that affable warm sense of humor and goofy personality, and his quirks and oddities reminded her achingly of Del, and that was the family that had welcomed her but where she did not feel welcome now, even less than usual.

She looked at the ways he absorbed himself in a nature documentary about gorillas, not the sapient ones of Gorilla city, but their wild cousins (who had rebounded from critically endangered by the protection of the gorillas of Gorilla City, though chimpanzees were rather more SOL) and how he seemed to subconsciously see elements of himself in the beasts, and she permitted herself a soft smile. Maybe she'd misjudged him out of that misguided reluctance to face something that reminded her of her family.

Tara took her for granted, but then she would. She remembered all too well going to her when the volcano had come to bury her in stone, offering to take her and her soul. Tara Markov had known who she was and was one of the infinitesimally small number of clients who thanked her for what she did and how she did it. But she had then declined and where Hob Gadling had been rewarded unknowingly, she had merely asked for a second chance, to see if her soul was as rotten as she feared it was, or if she was a good person at heart.

Watching Tara and the way that Tara understood Gar and could connect to that pain within his heart with her own and that both brought out the better angels of each others' nature.....

Death had no regrets. Tara and Gar had not spoken to her yet, though she knew Gar wanted to know what had truly happened to Markov. That would not be a pleasant conversation, but it would be one that would have to happen.

She felt the soft shift in the magic of the room that meant Raven had left her meditation. She looked haggard, gasping slightly. Death turned with more than slight concern. Raven simply moved her hand in a motion to say nothing and Death accepted with a quiet bit of discontent. 

Great.

\---------

_Central City, aftermath of the Hulk's clash with Grodd:_

Destruction of the Endless cocked his head. 

**I know what I've made, and which of these heroes tap so strongly into my sphere.**

The footprints, the craters in the asphalt, the lingering elements of not merely radiation but gamma radiation in the air.....  


**This isn't my doing. Not my circus, or my monkeys.**

He tapped his finger against his chin, squatting beside the damage, noticing the westward track of the rampage.   


**Hmm....I hope my sister is up for visitors from the family.**


	11. Meetings and Secrets:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hulk continues to cross the country and meets a strange woman. 
> 
> Faora Ul-Hul awakens after her coma. 
> 
> The Prodigal goes to California.

_Midnight, outskirts of Jump City:_

If anyone had been watching the skies that night they would have seen a strange thing. A door or a gateway opening and a being that seemed a giant striding through it, slowly seeming to compress in size and in density. His sigil of office was transformed into the kind of stick with his possessions within a bag worn by an old homeless person (and he enjoyed, at another level, the thought of using his sword thus but it was what it was). He descended on the city with a presence that deformed and crushed the universe around him, eyes sober. Now he had a specific city, after gritting his teeth and going to the Dreaming to ask one of his siblings he thought might know.

It bothered him more than he was willing to admit that his parents had spent so long in their own bitterness with themselves and with each other and only now, after the murder of Despair and its trauma, after his leaving and _that_ issue, after Dream deciding to change by death, and after realizing that their older sister had been badly hurt after her Exile and none of them had realized just how badly did Night and Time decide to treat the Endless like they were wanted. Billions of years and so much suffering, and it took one successful suicide and one attempt to draw them out.

He clicked his teeth. There were so many reasons he'd left this family, and there were deep regrets, too. Del had been with him when he'd prevented humanity from accelerating its own demise by dredging up artifacts of the war of Apokolips and New Genesis from the time when Yuga Khan had ruled it. That was his first moment of reaching out to his family. Now there was this. Talking with a sister whose struggles with getting along with and understanding people, which had been and remained a gift of his even in his change meant there was always a sourness in her next to him.

Yet those same gifts meant that he could not trust this to _Dream._ If his older brother had tried this he had every belief on his side that he would have been the proud and stern king, demanding his sister act like nobility. Dream tutted about Desire seeing mortals as toys yet Dream viewed mortals as subjects in his realm. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. And of course there was the thing that left the footprints and was crossing through North America, spending the nights staring at the stars and trying to make sense of what it was seeing. The thing that he had nothing to do with, meaning that this was as much Endless business as it was anything else, even if he was not truthfully retaking his role of governing his function.

He was on the outskirts of a city where his sister was on an island outside it. In truth he could have just arrived on the island but he wanted to see the kind of city his sister would stay in, to learn a bit about this before speaking. It had nothing to do with hesitance and words left unspoken and deep regrets. He knew, by now, why she'd tried to warn him. One could leave the family but one could never truly leave their very being behind. So he told himself. It had nothing to do with the very last time they saw each other, before his speaking to Dream two nights before he left, when he'd asked her to tell him what troubled her when he'd found her curled up and weeping after seeing a flash of something with white hair and four red eyes and the word "Skath" emblazoned on a wall.

She had looked at him with fear and shame and had only seen a hulking thing with long hair over her, reaching to touch her and then she'd fled with a look of fear he'd never imagined. Knowing what he did now there was that, and even if there was not Endless business he would have to speak to his sister and to try to heal that breach.

So he strode through Jump City, finding it fascinating. At the one hand having the ultra-modern element of the Big Apricot, buildings of esoteric materials reflecting alien influences. At the other there were alleys and streets that seemed much older, from the fifties to the thirties to the Victorian age, reminding him of Gotham. Nothing troubled him and he could sense traces of terrible and powerful sorcery unleashed, Asgard and Vanaheim and the world he'd made in his youth. He saw the city paper, the _Jump City Chronicle_ , and knowing that it was a superhero town turned to the section on the Titans, seeing to his genuine surprise (and for a moment his transformed sigil dropped from his hand) his sister holding hands with one of the superheroes, her head on her shoulder, as the two were seated in public.

In truth it was less that and more the sight of her left arm so badly damaged as it was, a deep valley carved into her forearm and another slice broken into two chunks in her upper arm, the nonchalance she had about that injury. He knew his family could be hurt, he knew what kind of forces could do such a thing. But this? He had no idea what, save one of her other facets, would have done this or why. It bothered him.

Death had told him that everyone could know everything that Destiny did, and most chose not to.

He still did not believe her, and yet looking at her and the reporters' comments on the 'beautiful Gothic aesthetics of Didi D'eath, who reminds us of the late, departed Cinnamon Hadley whom Didi credits as her inspiration for her style,' he sat for a moment and continued to read. 'In the last few years the off again on again relationship of Didi D'Eath and Raven, who has recently returned from parts unknown has been one of the bigger bits of news from Titans Tower. Raven, the demonic superheroine whose power arises from an unknown source only noted to be of a portion of Hell, has taken a more public role in recent years, only interrupted by her five year disappearance. She disappeared at the same time that Didi D'Eath did.

Speculation that she was on superhero business to find the missing D'Eath was not confirmed, Miss D'Eath only noting that they were reunited after she had been through some sharp unpleasant events and that Raven had indeed saved her from what it was. Queer Jump City rejoices that its most fashionable and influential superheroine has returned, as however notable the relationship of Superboy and Red Robin is, openly queer women among the superheroine community are few and Jump City blessed with a disproportionate number of them.

The leader of the local lesbian and bisexual women's advocacy group the Daughters of the Amazon said 'We're happy to see that our protectors have returned, and that Miss D'Eath is back in town,' and then made comments about how she hoped the recent defeat of Lex Luthor's bid for a second term for the Presidency by Senator Guelph of Delaware would mark progress for women's rights on a greater level.'

His eyes kept being drawn back to the photo. That was the entity who'd taken his sister's function and all of a sudden he realized exactly what had really happened with that and why and wondered if his sister could bring herself to admit it, yet. She'd shared her very heart and being with this demoness in a way that none of them had ever imagined one of their family could do.

There were a few other pictures, one of a green kid that reminded him strongly of various kinds of Elves he knew, some of Faerie, some of Alfheim, who was at a beach with a girl with blonde hair that was cropped close to her head.

And one other of Raven and Didi sitting in a cafe, Didi drinking something and listening to Raven talk, the look of love in her eyes plain and the sight of an alien walking to them with an excited look on her green eyes.

His talks with his sister convinced him that he'd missed much in his family's lives and seeing this further convinced him.

He dropped the newspaper, picked up his transformed sword again and resumed his walk.

It was in the morning after he'd crossed the bay and strode up to the island that he arrived at the door, an eyebrow raised when he saw no less than Dream's friend arriving on a boat.

 **You?** His question betrayed his surprise, eyes wide, his bundle clacking against his shoulder.

"Well," coughed Hob Gadling. "Surprised to see you here."

**Why are you here? Not like you to run around with the long underwear crowd.**

Gadling shrugged. "It's been a boring century, what can I say? I'm up for some excitement."

 **Well, this thing that's loose that I didn't create seems to be making a beeline for this part of North America. You may get more than you wish**.

Hob shrugged again. "Anything's better than boredom."

Destruction shrugged and then steeled himself with a deep breath and knocked on the door.

\-------

The Tower itself trembled at his knock, his human-sized frame striking it with equivalent force to Superman colliding into it at full speed. It rattled the Tower and all of its rooms, and in her shared bedroom Death sat up.

 _ **Dream was right**_ , she spoke in a startled shock.

Raven and Kori floated out, finishing drying themselves and then dressed with a wave of Raven's hands in the dual civilian and superhero outfits that her spell permitted that kind of swift shift from one to the other.

 _What the Hell?_ Raven's voice was surprised when the Tower shook again.

She went from surprised to worried when she saw Death trembling and went over to her to put her hand on her shoulder.

_Not sure how much I can protect you from something that makes you react like this, but...._

Death put her hand on Raven's. **_It's not that kind of reaction. I know who's at the door. I haven't seen him in 300 years. I never thought, in fact, that I would see him again and I did not want to._**

She teleported to the door before the rest of the team got there from Raven's own teleportation, as the tower rattled further with the third knock, Donna and Tara and Wally blinking like moles exposed to the Sun and grumbling at the noise.

Death opened the door. The team nodded half-awake and in that mental fog at Hob Gadling, who wore that day jeans and a "I went to STAR Labs and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" shirt. To his left there was a hulking figure, by far the tallest and biggest man they'd ever seen. He had long red hair in a ponytail, and a growth of stubble on his face.

**Hello, sister.**

They stared at Death in surprise as she looked at Destruction warily.

**_Brother._ **

Then she squeaked when Destruction drew her into a bear-hug without warning her, her eyes wide and her right hand twitching, resisting the impulse to form it into a fist and flail.

**Been too long.**

And with that Destruction of the Endless let himself into the Tower, as the team woke up very quickly at realizing just _which_ of her brothers was walking amongst them.

Blackfire, the last of the team to awaken (as living on Okaara meant that everywhere she was trembling was an ordinary state of affairs, giving her one of the few times where she was calmer than Gar Logan about something unexpected) floated around a corner, bleary-eyed, and then blinked stupidly for a moment.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Destruction smiled.

\--------

_Morning of the next day, near Salt Lake City:_

The Hulk sat Indian-style, feeling the warmth of the Sun on his skin. Nothing could stop the Hulk, though plenty had tried. There had been fighting and it felt good, for it made Hulk mad, and the madder Hulk got, the stronger Hulk got. And there were moments like this where Hulk was alone and there was peace, in a world not his own. The stars seemed like Earth's stars but there were subtle differences, the mind of puny Banner intruding in his own and their thoughtstreams converging. The radiation differed and was...off, as if they had been somehow frozen in place and the distortion affected their shine (and unknown to the Hulk or Banner this analysis was entirely correct).

The Hulk felt that warmth and then there was a red white and blue blur, the Hulk pausing when he saw a woman clad in armor that the Banner-mind told him was somewhere between Greek hoplite armor and the Roman lorica segmata. In her right hand she held a sword with a sharp blade that glinted in the reddish light of dawn, but her left was unarmed, both marked by bracelets. The Hulk would seldom have dismissed an armored being flying down with a sword pointed at him but some instinct less of Banner than the Hulk himself meant he was surprisingly calm.

"I mean you no harm," spoke a voice with a soft trace of an accent that was odd. More akin to a modernized form of Classical Greek than the demotic of Greece.

The Hulk's gaze turned straight to meet her own and she stood, unflinching and unafraid.

"I am Diana of Themyscira, here on behalf of the Justice League. Would you come with me, please?"

The Hulk looked at her carefully.

**Nothing can harm the Hulk.**

"I do not intend to. My purpose bequeathed to me by the Gods and by my mother is to fight monsters and to strive against the spirit of Ares."

The Hulk blinked.

**Like Hercules?**

She blinked, repressing a sharp spike of anger that crawled up her spine at the memory of _that_ oaf.

"Yes, like Heracles."

The Hulk nodded.

**You not attack the Hulk, Hulk approve. Hulk not attack others, but if others attack Hulk.....**

The creature raised a fist wider than Diana's body.

**Hulk smash.**

"I promise you the League will not attack you."

**Then Hulk go. Where is League?**

"We will teleport."

**Hulk accept.**

And then in a flash of light the Hulk and Wonder Woman vanished, the Hulk arriving on a teleportation pod in the Watchtower that cracked under his weight, the station trembling with his footsteps. The Hulk looked curiously.

**Puny Banner would like this place better than Hulk.**

And with that thought the Hulk _changed_ in less than the blink of an eye and Diana found herself staring at a thin man whose ribcage was very visible, holding sharply onto pants that slowly compressed to him, reflecting the unstable molecule-pants he'd bought from Reed Richards with several dozen pairs. Nobody was going to press a public indecency charge on the Hulk for showing Little Hulk in public if he transformed without it, but only a few times of _that_ had shaken Bruce Banner enough that he didn't intend to do it again for himself.

"Where the Hell am I?"Bruce Banner's voice, for a man most famous for turning into a monster, was softer and much more cultured with a strong flavoring of the Adirondacks where he'd grown up.

"You're on the Watchtower," he heard a Greek accented voice speaking. Well, kind of Greek. It didn't really match any accent he'd heard. He turned to see an olive-skinned woman clad in oddly American-hued armor for one who was from a Greek kind of place, and then he stared in mute surprise and familarity.

"Diana?"

She nodded. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know. A portal. It.....drew me here. I didn't volunteer to go here and I sure didn't want to go as the not so jolly green giant."

Diana nodded.

"In case you're wondering the Hulk has killed....things."

Bruce's face fell and he started to slink to his knees only for Diana to arrest that.

"He killed things that we were hunting that needed it. He was not a murderer, as harsh as it seems. He cured them of a plague without risk to himself."

Bruce still had a shadow over his face all the same.

"I.....I don't...."

Diana nodded. "Believe me, if they were less skilled at avoiding me I'dve given them the kiss of the Godkiller and been done with it."

Bruce nodded again, mutely accepting it. She really did remind him of Thor.

\--------

_Titans Tower:_

Destruction sat on the couch, munching on cookies made by Koriand'r. Even after five years of Raven's absence and her best efforts what she made was edible for herself and Raven in her more demonic moods and at best inedible and at worst a means to crush the GI tract of anything lesser that tried to eat it. Even an Amazon. And yet Destruction was munching something that was meant to be akin to a chocolate chip cookie that was deep black on the outside and had neon-green substances on the inside and humming approvingly.

 **Damn good,** he said looking at Kori, who beamed.

His sister was sitting away from him, he noticed, and in a way that he couldn't sneak up on her. He had not seen that look on her face, and then it dawned on him that she had not deliberately sought out any of the _men_ in the family, even if she hadn't exactly any women who would have done the reverse. A moment of dawning comprehension and guilt crossed his face, as he noticed that Raven was looking at him sharply.

**I am sorry, sister. I did not mean to.....to hurt you.**

Death couldn't quite bring herself to meet his gaze, her hand brushing the valley in her left arm, her jaw clenched.

 _ **It's not you**_ , she said, after an interlude that had the Titans cautiously waiting, uncertain if they should suit up and if they did, whose side they should be on. ** _Another.....another universe's me hurt me with a blade she forged herself. She went down a bad path and I made the mistake of trying to help her the wrong way. But she's me, too, and she was hurting for a very specific reason. Another person who....hurt me....besides the one you know about._**

His fists clenched and he gritted his teeth, willing himself to remain still. His sister was still fragile, even if she hadn't left her function, and it was not something he could take for granted anymore that if he did see her that she would speak to him, or to any of them.

He willed himself to be calm, closing his eyes, not noticing that Raven's sharp glare softened as she seemed to read his emotions and understand what she read and even felt no small amount of relief.

**Do you wish to talk about it?**

Death's jaw remained firm and her lips barely parted when she spoke, a frostiness creeping into her voice. **_No. That's all the family wants to talk to me about now. Before I was just the elder sister avoided because I made you feel your lives were brief, now I'm the pitiable daughter who tried to kill herself over a thousand times and failed every single one, and the traumas i kept to myself are what passes for conversation._**

The hostility made his hair stand on end.

He raised his hands, empty-handed, and spoke slowly and quietly.

**I accept that, sister. We haven't seen each other since the day I left the family.**

She looked away. He could see her hands fidgeting, and little motions in her shoulders, like she felt cornered. 

**Do you want me to go in another room or further away?**

She shook her head.

_**No, it's not you, like I said. I just had......a bad night.** _

The hand massaging her arm-wound went to her chest, where the glamour concealing the scar fell and they saw a hideous mark that crawled up past her breasts and left visible carbonized flesh on parts of them.

_**This was hurting me. I can't rest well when it does. It's hurt me more and more frequently since she came back. I know that's not a coincidence.** _

She sighed.

_**I'm not angry with you, Des. I wouldn't be.** _

Her deep black eyes met his.

_**I've just been in a bad way and after having those memories stirred up and amplified by new ones, it makes it even harder to be around my....family. We weren't the kindest to Del or to Despair and I'm much less likeable than either of them so I had no hope I would be accepted.** _

Destruction clicked his teeth.

**I wish I could say you were wrong to say that, sister.**

She still wasn't looking at him, and there was a look of sadness on his face for a moment. 

**But.....I'm your brother, and I'm going to be staying around this place for a while.** His grin was wry **. I don't need a home to feel comfortable, I can just make one. You need your space and to be around people you can trust.**

And now she did look at him, and her dark eyes were darker with tears.

Her lower lip quivered.

He knew there were words she wanted to say and that it was hard for her to say them, and he simply nodded.

Hob Gadling, who'd taken his time to tour the Titans' Trophy Room to see what new things were there, if anything, in the last five years arrived in the room then, seeing Death wiping her eyes and Destruction's face was a mixture of emotions that puzzled him. He was friends with Dream but no matter what face Dream wore, Dream was above humans and made no bones about just how far above them he was.

And here he was between Death and Destruction and both of them were much more human than others. Looking more closely at Destruction in his jeans and partially ragged green shirt, he frowned. He wasn't even sure if he was as human as an Endless, and that thought was more disturbing than he wanted to admit. Destruction got up, then, and went over to Death, staying out of physical range.

**I won't be staying here, sister, but I won't be far from the island, whenever you wish to speak to me.**

He saw a small smile on her lips for the first time in.....he did not know how long in the times of their interactions. A couple million years, perhaps.

**_I appreciate that. You don't have to leave right now, Des._ **

He let himself smile in turn.

 ** _They've met others of the family and it hasn't gone especially well. Even with me._** And then another awkward silence fell for a moment, and then up to a quarter hour of people looking around but usually anywhere but the two Endless.

It was Gar Logan, of all the Titans, who broke that silence.

"Well, first time for everything!"

He went up to the burly redhead and then paused.

"I've seen you before."

Destruction cocked his head. **Yes, you were the kid with the Doom Patrol when I had that encounter with that strange fifth dimensional being.**

Gar Logan grinned. "Yep!"

**You've grown taller.**

He beamed more broadly to a point that it seemed his face would split in two.

Vic cocked his head looking at Gar.

"You really weren't kidding when you said you've seen some shit, were you?"

Gar shrugged. "Doom Patrol, my man. What can I say?"

Destruction shrugged in turn. **He's right. Only ones used to weirder things are the Challengers of the Unknown.**

Blackfire pursed her lips, looking at Gar Logan carefully.

"I admit it," she said with a strange singsong element to her voice. "I'm impressed."

The rest of the day passed normally, Hob catching up with Dick Grayson and letting him know there was no new news on Vandal Savage or the other long-lived potential....figures.

"He isn't afraid of her?"

"Of course he is," sighed Hob. "He saw her, you see, back in the time when he was just a Neanderthal among Neanderthals."

His right hand clenched sadly. "He asked her not to die and she looked at him and granted the request, because he was afraid of her and still spoke anyway, and treated her like a person. That's what he told me, once, when we talked. He said there aren't enough beings like him for him to be too antagonistic to them."

Dick raised an eyebrow. "If you're about to ask me if I met the fruit loop with the Lazarus Pits, the answer to that is no. I'm long-lived, I'm not nuts." Dick relaxed more than slightly.

A normal day, among others. With Raven so nearly returned and the ways that their world, and their multiverse had convulsed in the grasp of monsters from Beyond, these were not taken for granted as otherwise they might have been.

\--------

_Watchtower meeting room:_

Bruce Banner stood in front of the Justice League, retaining his pair of unstable molecule pants but now wearing one of the few spare shirts they had, a garish looking flannel shirt provided by the weird Rorschach wannabe.

"You're not here as an attack by anyone?"

Bruce shook his head.

"I listened to that set of stories you told and I have no idea what that thing is. If something like that is out there...." He shrugged. "Even the other guy would need to listen to Rush Limbaugh on loudspeaker in a padded room to get a fraction of pissed enough to make something like that leave."

The team laughed, slightly.

"Since I'm stuck here with no real way back..." he looked at the back of his hand, relaxing in being human. "I apologize for thinking you were the Squadron Supreme."

Superman shrugged. "It's an understandable impression. They rather were like us, after all."

Bruce nodded. "From our perspective it's more that you're like them, but...."

And everyone shrugged. "I admit it, being a part of this team for Bruce as well as the Hulk? I'm honored."

A hulking man with dark hair and a bright orange mail outfit leaned forward.

\---------

_Dru-Zod's base:_

Faora Ul-Hul awoke, her blue eyes staring wildly. For a moment she raised a hand to try to ward off the enraged blow of the gigantic golden-skinned creature in purple, afraid of what bones might start ripping through her skin now, hating herself for being unable to bite back a small scream that escaped where it had been stifled.

She was in a yellow-sun chamber, she realized. Healed. More than healed. Stronger. Levitating from her back to her feet, she saw a surprising warmth in the gaze of Zod and resisted a slight temptation to flaunt the killing impulse never too firmly buried. For all that he postured about the weakness of the son of El, Zod was dour, unimaginative. Because Jor-El's son had a son, he wanted a son. Because she met his physical ideal, he with all of his programming as a product of Krypton's flirtation with the genhanced mated with a woman of the same caste who embodied much more of their genhanced caste's failings than he did.

And yet their son, product of warriors and generals, was an affable and decent type who was good at fighting when he needed to be, but less aggressive than they were. She thought Lor-Zod was weak, a blight on their lineage, yet his father, for all that he did not permit his son to talk back and believed in the discipline of the fist, welcomed a son who in his view showed promise as a strategist. He was of the war-caste, designed to wage war and to fight it.

That was all that mattered. And yet Lor-Zod was not with them. Alone he had gone to Earth, and they knew nothing of if he had reached the world or what adventures he might have had along the way.

She landed, and walked out, conscious of her armor, and of the ripe smell of her body.

Zod held her in spite of this and she let herself be held before telling him "I....am going to shower now."

She moved swiftly, and saw for a moment a being in golden armor with skin dark as night and stripes of firey red along it, her eyes pools of flame brighter than Kryptonian eyes charging up heat or X-ray vision.

One of the two entities that rescued her. Here, still.

It made her pause for a moment and the thing smiled at her with molten-red fangs and gave her a derisory wave. Must investigate further, she decided. But first, after two weeks of recovering under a yellow-sun lamp (in truth about five days, as time was reckoned around this star but it was her personal self and it felt like two weeks to her) there was that shower.

She soon was out of her armor, able to look at herself in the mirror. No bones protruding. No sickly nasty bruising as proof of her weakness. Everything the way it should be. Dru-Zod was a weak, sentimental fool who loved someone who was incapable of the emotion, and loved her truthfully. But he would want vengeance, for it was how Krypton's gene-smiths had forged them.

And she wanted it too. Warworld was going to die, it had chosen the manner of its death.

Remembering vaguely molten heat and the smell of burned flesh and metal and glimpses of the horrid sight, and the way that Mongul had reacted in horror to a flash of terrible flames, she smiled. If the rescuer had stayed, then it had not only chosen the manner of its death, but it would be the most terrible.

"Soon," she crooned, a sweet song on her lips. Vengeance, and a red sky. And the bones of Mongul bleaching beneath the uncaring stars. Her hands ached, not from the iron gloves Mongul forced on them, but from the desire to clutch throats and to destroy the weak paperskins that had it. "Soon," she crooned, and water ran along herself and she washed away the taint of weakness, humming an old song of Krypton.

\----------

"So you're honored. Do you accept the honor?"

Bruce stood proudly. "I do."

"Welcome to the Justice League, Bruce Banner. And the Hulk, if he can hear you."

Hearing the clamour of Hulk voices in his head Bruce just nodded with a slight spastic twitch to his right eye.


	12. Of Family and the Fall of War-World:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream and Desire talk. 
> 
> War-World is attacked by the Black Zero and Yeneli. 
> 
> Destruction asks Death two questions he always wanted to ask her.

_Titans Tower meeting room, morning:_

Death had slipped out of her shared room early that morning, something in her telling her that Raven's nightmares were the kind where she would need Kori over her. They had desire and a shorter history to tie them, but she had not been entrusted with a piece of Raven's soul in a world of petrified mortals locked in an eternal silent scream. So she was here, on their couch, thumbing through one of her graphic novels. She was so certain Raven wanted to ask her more in depth questions about these, but she knew that would be a talk for both of them. She was perusing panels of _Overture_ when she felt her brother announcing his presence and the work vanished. 

She gave him an uneasy smile but he sat away from her and fully in her line of perception.

Much more relaxed, she let herself give Des an uneasy smile, the parts of her that ached to know how to be with people beyond the steps she'd learned with Raven and Kori having things that wanted to surge up. The rest of her, habits over all those long long, long years kept her jaws shut and her expression uncertain.

 **I'm not going to talk about anything you don't want to talk about,** Destruction began, and then he cracked his knuckles.

**But I do have two questions I intend to ask.**

She raised an eyebrow, a streak of darkness on bone. 

_**Shoot.** _

**When we were talking, the time before our last meeting, you told me everyone knows what Destiny knows, but we tell ourselves that we don't. Did you truly mean that, or were you alluding to surviving all those times in all those other universes?  
**

Her surprise was visible and Destruction couldn't resist a slight smugness to his grin, leavened with some sadness. 

_**I....I did mean it. The reason that people, as you put it, fall into holes and the like is precisely what happened....**_ she waved her arms dramatically, like Lex Luthor in one of his many rants about the children of Krypton, **_here. I do know, but the truth, Des, is that any given universe fits into a pattern, and my ways to subvert that pattern have all fit into one, too. But in any given universe, I remember all the rest, but what unfolds for event to event is the history of that universe. No two are truly alike._**

Her chest burned for a moment with the heat of the blade that had struck it and scarred her, and her hand went to it as she couldn't suppress a slight whimper of pain.

**_All universes differ subtly from each other, and so does both the magick and the science and the other energies, besides, of Existence from cycle to cycle. That's what makes her so dangerous, she is not of this universe, and nothing aimed against her from this universe will ever work properly. And with someone like her, it must work properly or not at all._ **

She sighed. 

**_But no, surviving those other universes never gives me any means to handle what unfolds in any given one according to its pattern any more easily, nor do my emotions.....stop. I am not like you, brother. You have seen what happens when I do as you do and leave my sphere to govern itself. You leave and destruction unfolds more wildly, but still happens. I leave and reality nearly unravels in even less time than it did at the beginning._ **

She clenched her hands and sighed, looking downward. 

Destruction's look on his face was sad, if she had looked to see it, but she did not.

**I said that we did not have a right to meddle in their lives, and that, sister, you do not do. And yes, I left governing my sphere and it functions but.....**

The pack on his stick became his old suit of armor and his blade swung into his hand, gleaming with a brilliant hue.

**I have not left my function, for it would mean another case as with Despair and Dream, and then that cycle repeats.**

And with a flick of his wrist the blade was a stick again and his armor a bundle around the blade. 

She sighed.

_**I wish......** _

Silence followed and Destruction waited to see if she would finish.

**I know I said I had two questions but I wish to ask one other.**

Her raised eyebrow he took as a yes. 

**What things did you regret with me? I always got the feeling you were angry with me for things that were of my doing and not so.**

Death sighed again with a broken and fragile tone to it. 

**_Things left unsaid. As I said, all universes are subtly different. If I say them to you, I do not say it to him, and the thing I keep being tempted with most is the prospect of seeing them all again. They held me when they.....when you...._ **

Her scar was brushed by her hand, her arm seeming to tremble slightly from it, and she felt a rush from the pain but did not say anything of it.

_**They told me to be strong, and I tried to be, but I've lived too long and nothing can stop it.** _

Destruction laughed ruefully.

**And here we think our lives are brief because we are bounded within a universe.**

Death's smile was weary and saddened, but she nodded. 

**The other question is this: In how many of these alternate universes did you try to stop me leaving, knowing what it means to all of us, what it did and has done to all of us?**

Death froze, winced, and then cast her head down as tears streaked her cheeks. 

_**All of them. And because of my own pride with what happened to me at his hands, I flee from you because you trigger me and that helps push you over an edge in something finished by our brother.** _

Destruction winced, in turn.

**I do not fault you for not telling any of the others, but you could have told me, at least. I would never judge you.**

He waved his own hand slightly dismissively. 

**I have a freedom you long for, don't I?**

She nodded. 

**And yet in leaving I was the younger brother emulating the wisdom of my big sister, and relieved that my sphere continues in its own pace even as I take no direct role in it.**

The haunted look in her eyes concerned him. 

**You didn't make me leave just by giving me the idea, sister. Life is too complicated for such things. I do appreciate that you said nothing at that point and did not try to dissuade me. You respected my ability to leave, and you showed a rare case of actually understanding what there was to say. I did not want to hear anything, from anyone. I wanted out, and so I went.**

Death was quiet, then, as she had been so long ago. 

Destruction's smile was as rueful as his laugh.

**In the end, sister, you remain better for the family than I am.**

Now he saw simple incomprehension in her eyes and he felt a spasm of sorrow at realizing that this was what truly lay behind her mask. 

**I am not speaking to flatter you, or to draw you back in. None of us truly understand each other. You are not unique in that. You can go to all of our realms unfazed when most of us can barely tolerate each others' realms. You do not do things well, but who can? Desire is.....Desire. Despair.....only connected to her, even where I am concerned. Del is......well, she's Del. At best we can help her on the good days and pick up from the bad. Dream? By our parents' dead gods, Dream. If he can find the most histronic and overly contrived path to opening a pickle jar, he would.**

Death couldn't stop a soft bark of laughter at that image. 

**Destiny is a prisoner no less than you, and I think you and I of all people can understand why he did what he did, even if we do not give him absolution for the deeds, or their consequences.**

**We are all this way, and I no less than the rest. We set up barriers, and I drew behind mine and set up fortifications that Del and Dream crashed through recklessly, even dangerously. But they did so, and they found me. Fortunately, for her sake.**

Destruction shook his head with fond memories. 

**But I didn't keep trying, and I am not strong enough to. You alone do things with the entire family, which I cannot do, and do not have the strength to do because it would require me to hold to my function. And it is that selfishness with my own nature that is why you call me the Prodigal.**

Death couldn't resist a nod to that, studying her hands intently. 

The words were spoken and she could not truly find herself accepting them.

 _ **Thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty two iterations of failure to prevent people marching to their own demises in spite of learning the where and why, and in spite of loving them hardly makes**_ _**me** **confident there.**_

Destruction stood up and he mouthed words to her and she bit her lip and stiffened but nodded, his hand sliding to her shoulder, and no further, as he knelt down beside her, bringing them to eye level.

**Sometimes, sister, trying to prevent people from being themselves shows that you care, but....it's like Cain and Abel. I think you ran yourself ragged trying to save us from ourselves, and you did that over enough lifetimes that I can't fathom how you see this as not loving others. You say that you do not understand people and that much is decidedly true.**

His grin was lopsided again. 

**Nobody who understands people would put so much effort into trying to save those who do not want to be saved out of sheer love to outlast universes.**

Those words Death did absorb and the sense of some absolution, of someone who did understand meant her vision swam and when Destruction moved to hold her and let her cry into his shoulder she let him unironically do so, feeling for a moment like the young girl she seemed to be next to the towering hulking lump of a man he seemed to be. 

**No miracles in this business, my dear sister. It will take you a long time to heal. You'll have good days and bad days, and that just makes you a person. We might be who we are, but we are people, too. And your problem is not that you don't care, it's that you care too much to a point you've convinced yourself of something that isn't true.**

She cried harder and held him and it was later in the morning, when the team rose that Destruction was wolfing down one of Starfire's concoctions (and the team was not so quietly grateful that the unsurprisingly vast reservoir of her food was beginning to be depleted) and Death had prepared for them all a meal that was better than any they'd had, good enough to qualify for Dream's own table, but in the world of waking. Raven held Starfire's hands and trembled and then went to her and kissed her forehead gently and gave her an empathic-telepathic pulse thanking her for the space, and Death gave her a soft smile and kissed her lightly on the edge of her lips, and squeezed Starfire's hand. 

The next few days passed surprisingly normally on Earth, only the normal elements of crime and super-crime at work.

_Realm of Desire:_

_Dream, I stand in my gallery and I hold your sigil. Brother dearest, will you speak to me?_

And from his portrait emerged a being of shining bone-hued robes and skin to match, with hair to match likewise and only his eyes retaining traces of the old Morpheus. 

**Desire.** A single word redolent with so many mixed emotions.

 _Dream,_ a word likewise redolent with the always-mocking element of Desire's voice even in xir most sincere moments.

_I have learned that my counterpart in that part of Existence where our sister was wounded by the other was the architect of her misfortunes there. All a bit of petty spite to get her off xir case, but xie too thought xir sister was stronger than you and planned for that sister, not the fragile and wounded thing hurt and rubbed raw there by....it._

Dream crossed his arms in front of his chest. 

**And?**

Desire pinched xir nose.

 _And xie shows folly and is worse, more or less unrepentant of it. I did get you to spill family blood, brother dearest, for which you retaliated by seducing and leaving my granddaughter._ Desire winced slightly. _As a retaliation that was right up my alley and I cannot admit to much beyond admiration for it, even if my poor granddaughter continues to suffer for her heritage._

Desire shrugged with the apathy xie truly felt to such beings, even xir own direct bloodline. 

_I suggest for a time that we call our little feud a truce. You died like Despair did, brother. Like Del changed. I wanted an act of spite to compensate for the break in the parliament. I did not anticipate going quite so far as that. And now our sister, the one that truly holds our family together, proves more fragile than I anticipated, and her responses prove the more valid when part of me is an_ _unrepentant.....well, asshole._

Dream snorted. 

**And?**

_Much as it pains me, brother dearest, I wish to ask you for help. If any of us understands her even partially, it is you. I cannot help the portion of her over there nor slap sense into myself there. There it seems we are at opposite extremes, a kind of cosmic balance. But here?  
_

Desire steepled xir hands and xir body became very masculine and almost the size of the Prodigal. 

_I also don't trust our parents. They threw her out like Zeus threw Hephaestus or the Presence the Morningstar. They forbade us to speak of her by name, hence we call her sister now and not Exile. They knew Despair was murdered, that you were captured by Burgess, that Delight became Delirium. They knew that you did commit suicide and they did nothing to speak or to do more than a slight mourning in that cerement when we made O'Shaugnessy._

Desire's hulking form leaned forward, the masculine element giving xir an undeniable resemblance to a bone-hued and black-haired version of the Prodigal. 

_I do not trust them not to hurt any of us, and in that element, our own feuds mean nothing until we are in a position to renew them._

**Why should I trust you?  
**

_You can always count on me to pursue the most selfish path, and that path here is helping our broken sister to stitch herself back together, and to ride out our parents' momentary interest and to be there for Del and for her when they abandon us again. They don't love any of us, but they **hate** her. When, not if, they turn away from us and back to their apathy it will hurt her badly, as it did Del. We have been there for Del, but we need to be there for her, too.   
_

Dream raised an eyebrow. 

_I am fully sincere here. You know that, by that insufferable knowledge of stories._

Dream laughed softly. **Very well, but we will do our sister the service of giving her awareness that we are working together and the gist of what work is to be done and is being done. Destiny chose secrecy and he nearly destroyed us completely as a family.**

Desire smiled then sincerely and nodded, now a feminine avatar of beauty, simultaneously curvy and slender and reflecting masculine ideals not strengthened by appreciable contact with actual flesh and blood women with flesh and blood bodies. They shook hands. 

_Deal._

And Dream was gone, as Desire looked at one of xir plants. Xie had used this the last time to 'help' Death and sown the elements of that feud. Xie had no desire to rush into repeating a failed experience. 

And yet.....Desire let xirself smile. So often did xie indulge the more sadistic elements of xir nature that xie did not indulge the kinder elements. Yet if not to prepare earlier to help with heartbreak that was a fixed point in time, what use was xir function? Xie would benefit either way, but perhaps this might go some small way toward repairing the disaster with the Mercy.

_Warworld:_

Warworld burned. 

The orbital strike from the _Black Zero_ had shattered its defenses in a pulverizing strike of such fire and fury that Mongul and his children had been stunned at the sheer audacity of the thing. First came the orbital strike and then the descent of fully armored Kryptonians, who began to wreak a murderous slaughter of his subjects. Mongul had snarled with contempt then. He had driven them off and tormented the woman, but he clearly had not seen an intense enough message with terror. Little matter, he would fix that.

Then the _other_ thing, the one that had come to his world with Lobo fell like a meteorite quite literally from Hell, golden armor blazing with the fury of that which had sharded off to form part of the metaphysical framework of _stars._ Fire and smoke trailed from it and a blade hewed artillery rounds in half and overpowered laser blasts in eruptions that smote the sky. It had fallen with a blade of fire at its edge, and the being that fell landed in a kind of three-point landing augmented by hurling the blade clean into the ground and unleashing a terrible flame into Warworld's heart.

It was flame only by analogy, if it was flame at all, it seemed the very principle of World-Destruction. His best and brightest in the brain part of war were trying to fight a force that could not be fought, that corroded like acid and reduced metal to molten liquid and stone to blackened ash that billowed like dust. His Warworld had frozen in space within minutes of the terrible force being unleashed and others of his fighters had made a beeline for the epicenter. And he saw the growing carnage, a blade of flame reaching out and that terrible force drawing a harvest of the dead.

Indeed it seemed to not merely blaze but to _drink_ their souls and to blaze with its terrible annihilation-force in a progressively more powerful fashion such that eventually where it landed cracked and a molten caldera formed and like a terrible parody of one of Earth's gods a figure in golden armor walked on the lava that burned and smote where it reached to make a progressive move further. Warworld weakened and Warworld sickened and even the carnage of the Kryptonians seemed small, for what was a body that could fly through stars ripping and tearing through flesh at a speed just slightly less swift than light itself next to the metaphysical fabric of the universe turned to the destruction of worlds?

Lesser entities would have wept or rued the day they provoked Dru-Zod.

Mongul snarled. His world burned and was dead in space, it was dying and a single being that had taken his captive from him was killing it.

"Mongul, Mongal," he spoke to his son and daughter. 

"We go find this thing with the blade that has killed this Warworld and then we will it and add its head as the first on the pikes of our next."

His children made earthy grunts of amusement, and with him and their fists and eyes sparking they marched to face the spirit of Earthly lore that had fallen from Heaven like the Devil himself.

Warworld sickened and Warworld hollowed as the Moloch that fell from the skies took its first offering by fire, an offering of itself to itself, in mocking emulation of the King of the realm her uncle would lay low come the end of time. Instead of Runes gained, it was Ruin.


	13. Decline and Fall of the House of Mongul:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeneli burns War-world, and turns her sight to the world of Almerac. 
> 
> Death goes on a date with Koriand'r. 
> 
> That evening Night goes to speak to her daughter again.

_Warworld:_

Warworld burned. Its sickening could be felt by the House of Mongul, surging to the growing cloud of smoke and the stench of burned and cut flesh where the terrible blade wielded by the fire-demon that had 'rescued' Faora Ul-Hul from their ranks was achieving its foul harvest. They could feel their world's orbit halted, had withstood the terrible gravitational forces. They were mighty, stronger than Kryptonians under yellow suns, their eyes too could burn with terrible lights. 

Warworld burned and then they were there, a vast billowing cloud of the smoke of dead corpses and broken bodies before them, two eyes of coal-light blazing from the smoke and a blade seeming to quite viciously and brutally rip its way through the material fabric of the universe itself. From the corpse-smoke stepped a giant, a malevolent thing with magma-skin and blade to match, a killer's smile on her lips.

 _ **Children of the House of Mongul,**_ she drawled in a lazy manner meant to goad them further, as indeed it did.

**_I begin to seek my birthright and to fulfill the third time what I did not the first two. Mine the blade that shall be the death of Death herself, and End another of the Endless. In that path, you are but the first obstacles and the first sacrifices. I have learned of a great means to enforce this, a thing of those entities beyond the realms of this world. In their hands it was called the Staff of Storms and it was empowered to fight even the Deathless on even terms. So too is it that this power is now brought in by my hands, those of a World-Destroyer. I could have used this world to make my own empire and to blaze and forge the stars anew, to shatter Hell with a song._ ** **_I forego this and I grant you and your heirs, Mongul of Warworld, but a simple gift._ **

**_Oblivion._ **

Then the giant moved toward them with a speed that they did not anticipate, for she was large, as tall as the creature Titano on Earth, swollen by the power of the souls her blade had begun to devour and bind into itself to enhance its already-formidable powers. 

Mongul's son was the first to leap at her with his own speed to exceed that of a Kryptonian until the dreadful blade impaled him and he gasped, his voice ruined by the impact of the fires working their ways through his body.

**_Fool._ **

It was the only word spoken and then the light blazed more brightly and there was ashes and the terrible flames seemed to pulse and purr with satisfaction. 

Mongal and her father were smarter, they sought to fight the being on both sides, and to launch their beams not for the blade but for the creature's wrist holding it on Mongal's side and for her eyes on another. The creature roared in pain at the impact of Mongal's beams in its face, and at that of the beams slicing into its gauntlet and greave, but the roar became laughter. Laughter, even as its eyes were laid waste and ran like molten magma down what was now craters in an unlovely face and as its hand dangled near-shorn clean off by the light that had torn into it.

_**I was the Arch-Sorceress of my people, our counterpart to Odin Gallow-King of Asaheim and Freyja Dwarf-Fucker of Vanaheim, and Freyr who is to be slain by my uncle at the last battle and the day of doom before he burns all worlds to ashes! Mere power of light from your flesh can do nothing to me!** _

She spoke a sharp Word of Power, an antisound culled from the long-standing knowledge of her people.

What had been done to her was undone.

 _ **You took my eyes,**_ she snarled at Mongal, and then in a sudden rush slammed into her, tackling her to the ground, Mongal screamed in pain at the feeling of terrible Hellfires that blazed so close to the skin, skin that could take the most angered blows of a Kryptonian with ease registering third degree burns that left a sensation that went from pain to a terrible numbness.

The hell-blade was next to her face, which smouldered and singed and then darkness was the last thing her own eyes could see.

_**An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.** _

Then the blade suddenly was pulled away and in a single terrible wrenching heat Mongal became smoke as the blade drank down her very being and the monster giggled with delight.

**_The Witch-King of Tezshazhun knew exactly what he was doing._ **

Then there was the father, whose beams ripped into her back with gaping wounds and as she jerked in pain he slammed her forward, hand seeking to grasp the wrist that held the blade. 

**_You're not my type, Lord of Warworld._ **

Mongul snarled and then slammed her head into the ground repeatedly, seeking to give her a concussion even as she formed two Words of Power and with the hand that he did not grasped formed a rune of her own world, not the ones gained by Odin on the World-Tree but the Runes of the Lifeblood of Worlds. 

The rune blazed with a vicious light and Mongul jerked back, fires blazing along his front as he roared in agony, stumbling blindly.

The Words of Power restored her flesh, the sensations of pain, of true pain, so deliciously fueling the very power of the blade that she wondered how the Unmaker's Kin had overcome this at all.

Rising to her feet, she held her blade in her right hand and then instead of stabbing Mongul in the heart, as his son and daughter had been stabbed, she simply jammed the blade through his skull and inhaled the odor of Mongul burning to ashes.

Zod and Faora flew over to her, horrified at the scale of devastation and for the first time she could sense a small doubt in them at understanding what they'd made a bargain with. What, and who.

A rune formed by molten fire-magic in the skies, a gleaming sigil of her people and the Kryptonians were on their ships in their seats, enthusiastic about the next phase of the plan.

Warworld burned, and it was dead, a rock frozen in time.

At last, as the world was about to die, she saw _her,_ staring at her in mute expressions she could not read well, or more precisely refused to accept.

_**I'm gonna give you a lot more work, sugar.** _

Then the blade slammed into the ground of Warworld and the Kryptonians in the _Black Zero_ watched in utter horror as the world burned to ashes and then crumbled into a vast asteroid field strewn with the dead.

Yeneli strode toward her dear lover, who held a gigantic shining being by her side and then laughed as she launched a fireball merely to taunt her.

Yet dark eyes stared at her impassively and in a sound of wings and a flash of light the spirit of Warworld went to its fate and the fireball lanced through the void of space. Yeneli snarled.

Her chest _hurt,_ the Godkiller's power refusing to be ignored.

She yanked off her left gauntlet and bit her wrist to stifle a soundless scream, savoring the taste of her own blood, and then spoke the Word of Power that restored her flesh once more and in a flash of fire returned to the ship.

Her chest _hurt,_ the memory of Diana's blade and her power troubling. She had slain an Endless, withstood the very power of the Outer Ones with nothing more than being winded (and a bruise that coated three quarters of her upper body from the impact of the Fateful Lightning's fist but she elected to forget that). And yet if not for her love's protection it would have ended that day in the desert in a glorified stabbing by a woman running around in star-spangled hoplite armor. She was grateful she never truly needed to breathe, as the kind of wheezing she would have done otherwise would have given her 'allies' thoughts of opportunities that she did not want them to have.

Another Word of Power and then the _Black Zero_ blazed with light and the Kryptonians at its controls grasped that it was no longer their ship at a fundamental level. The Jotunness in her space that she had modified to reflect the power and the nature of that which was her very being sat, content, the magic within blazing with great potency. Warworld had died. Now to Almerac. And eventually, when her 'allies' understood precisely what they had let into their chambers and how much power she was gaining from all of this, to show Zod that one could not make bargains with devils without reaping precisely what was sown from them.

_Jump City:_

Death was nervous, a situation she had truly felt only once before. And that had been when she'd faced her counterpart in her vengeful mood of self-destruction, threatening that _other_ Raven and Starfire. The Starfire of that world had at first looked at her with the distrust the part of her in that world had so justly earned and then her heart had changed and yet the memory enduered. The Koriand'r here floated with happiness, slightly above the ground, as she walked by her hand in hand in Jump City.

With the Titans being one of the most openly queer superhero teams in Earth-38 it was no big deal to see the team's queer people out together, spending time together. Tim and Kon were on a date of their own, a paintball game (Kon's idea, he enjoyed doing things that didn't require him to use his powers and which gave them both the chances to be there as equals).

Raven did not need to meditate this day the way she had before the strange boiling force of rage vanished, and Destruction was making a living, from what Death understood, as of all things a foreman at a construction site. One very fond of demolitions and in a superhero town one that saw frequent use. Superhero cities had the most skillful urban renewal specialists out of any, and the most efficient morticians as well. It was a job that suited him and he did indeed leave the Tower and go about living life in his own way. She'd waved to him, cautiously, and he'd waved back much more enthusiastically.

So today was a day where Kori had drawn her into her idea of a date, which meant, as Death found out, simply going about a day together exploring the strange schizoid aspects of Jump City. The ultra-modern aspects that rivaled anything in Metropolis, the Big Apricot the true City of Tomorrow. That's where things had begun, an exploration of reverse-engineered alien technology. Which set of aliens concerned her more than slightly, as she detected an element of thrumming power here that reminded her a little too much of the monster driven off, whose last traces had been crushed by Doctor Banner, who had done the universe a great service in the deed.

It had an ivory and gold element to it, and a strange kind of metaphysical trace, but one that was stronger and sharper in its own ways than others.

It did not shine of malice, so she let it be, and simply walked with Kori to see the various machines and gizmos created. Other technology was much more familiar, much of it Oan. A few cases of Atlantean technology and she spent time appraising a shield reverse-engineered from the powers of one of the Manhunter statues with one manufactured in the armories of Xebel. Each was a masterpiece of their kind and where Dream and Destruction would have had stronger impressions, all she felt was a profound sadness. No matter how advanced the societies or their knowledge, in the infinite stars there was no shortage of war and carnage and the laughter of thirsting Gods.

Things that kept her function more active than she liked. The sense of sadness warred with the horrors of remembering her frenzied aspect in that other universe, armored and wielding a great blade, and she let go of Kori to brush the scars and turned away, and Kori understood immediately and let herself down to walk with her and said nothing. That moment passed when they went out and she enjoyed one of her favorite treats. It was a puzzle to the Titans that Kori, who made treats that only the literal personification and governing power of the concept of Destruction (and other Tamaraneans, where their princess was one of the true masters of their cuisine) could enjoy, frowned at hot dogs and disliked them. To Death it was a minor amusement as she relished the taste, a reminder of old times.

Kori for her part made one of her own things that drew a couple of startled glances from tourists, one of them saying loudly "Holy shit, how can she even eat that?"

She shrugged and Death gave the person a sharp stare that made them shiver and murmur something about 'a gooose walking over their grave' as they moved on. Kori didn't care and happily ate her own meal and daintily put it up, resuming a day that went from the futuristic corners of Jump City to a more shadowy one. Here was a thing that Kori (and her sister Komi, who'd learned of it from her and found it a thing where they were slowly and starting to bond) did away from the eyes of any, save Raven. It was a slum, one of the places that produced so many of the people who opportunistically sided with various villains, because it offered pay and ways out.

Here Kori came not to do the 'gentrification' thing she'd heard Vic get into rather unpleasant arguments with Dick about, but to help in the quiet ways. Here she rebuilt and repaired damage with the aid of others. Here she sought to be a person for those who had very little.

Here she sat by the side of someone who was excited to see her, and heard Lupe telling her excitedly about her day as her 'girlfriend Didi' not only listened but made her quiet contributions, too. Didi was afraid that the girl would judge her, if not by the instinctive awareness that others had of who she truly was, deep down, at the sight of the horrific damage to parts of her body. Instead Lupe, all of ten, went to her and spoke quietly "It's all right, if you're worried about how you look."

Didi looked at her curiously.

"There are....people....who are hurt. A lot of them, actually. In the past it wasn't like that. Before Raven....disappeared. Here, people fought but we had the Angel of the Hospitals who meant that other than people.....passing away...there wasn't near the kind of things that happened in other cities. The Titans...." she was quiet. "Mama told me that some of her friends who....made decisions...didn't come out of them easily."

Death gave her a somewhat guilty look that she didn't understand, leaning toward her and whispering into her ear:

"Kori can help with a lot of things like that."

And then she'd moved up her own sleeve to show a horrific charred patch on her left shoulder.

"That was when Superboy's heat vision....wasn't especially careful."

She smiled. "Kids grow up weird around here. I'm...glad you show this. Other than Cyborg there aren't a lot of Titans or their people who really get it."

Didi, as Starfire's girlfriend was known, smiled then and talked quietly with her and soon found herself connecting to others, young and old alike affected by the aftermath of the hero-villain battles and what it was to be the henchmen of the various villains.

In later years, when she was 102 and had lived a happy and contented life and seen the slum she grew up in transformed in a way she could have never imagined and future generations grew up ruggedly proud of the past when it was a supervillain henchman-factory, she would find a familiar face coming to her at the end and gazing at her with a smile and showing her the damage on her arms and telling her how much a child's words spoke to a being of unfathomably ancient years,at a time when she needed to hear them. She was awed then to realize the nature of whom she'd spoken to, and took her hand at first and then pulled her into a hug as if greeting an old friend. 

That time passed the day and it was near suppertime when Kori whispered into Didi's ear "I know you can fly, but humor me, please love?"

Didi cocked her head for a moment and then Kori's arms, so gentle and genteel looking for such great strength were around her in a grip of iron and she made a surprised and delighted squeal when Koriand'r literally _rocketed_ up with her in her arms. It was a swift journey and Death spent it looking at Kori's face, and saw in the woman who was as comfortable appraising the kind of elements she'd grown up in and reaching out to those who had no-one else, in a way that only Rachel truly matched her for in this place (though Vic and Sarah were the ones who reached out most to the disabled). She understood already why Rachel loved her so, but it gave her quietness to not merely know, but to see.

That look stayed on her face, Raven out that evening, not called by the League but instead by the Sentinels of Magic and returning with her cloak singed and her hair charred on one edge and a look of great triumph on her face. Death had wondered if she would summon them to bed to enjoy that triumph when her team froze. They felt the same mystical signature that had appeared before in that strange dream that her mother, who had exiled her, now thought of her as her daughter and not the monster that had hidden among her family and been exiled and thrown with such force that she had been mute from the grip on her throat for a time.

She froze, as shadows crawled and there was light withi nthe shadows.

Light.....

She whirled around, her eyes wide.

The shadows formed a voluptuous woman whose gaze was quiet and worried, with a tinge or more than a tinge of sadness, and Death froze for a moment.

She did not smile.

**_Hello, mother._ **

Raven and Kori opened the door, and Death stepped in to follow them.

**_Good bye mother._ **

And with that she did not quite slam the door in Night's face, but only because Raven's wards and her dislike of sudden sharp noises she did not make herself meant that she could not.

Night stood, the door shut in her face, biting her finger for a moment.

She sighed.

**Very well, I will be here in the morning.**

She went down to the Titans' meeting room and slouched on their couch, creating for herself a nice cozy space. In the morning, when the Titans slouched in, it would be Garfield Logan who just took one look at Night herself on their couch and shrugged and said: "Crazy Jane was weirder" and went off to get some vegan milk as a part of his breakfast. 

It was Death, who looked very contented, her clothes in more than slight disarray, who froze.

_**You're still here?** _

**I want to talk to you, daughter.**

Death gave her a somewhat sickly grin. 

_**Oh. OK.** _

The team awkwardly filed out of the room, save Rachel and Kori (and to her genuine surprise, Dick, who gave her a protective questioning look that made her smile within, even as she inwardly snorted. Between Death and Night the Batman's ward was less than nothing, as would be the Batman himself. She moved her head with him, but Starfire and Raven stayed.

Night looked to them curiously.

**I would prefer this between the two of us.**

Kori was uncertain but Raven, in a surprising turn to her didn't hesitate at all. 

_I don't think she does._

Night turned to look at Death, who was trying, and not well, to hide the set of anxieties her mother's presence meant for her, and sighed, seeming to slump a bit. 

With visible ill-grace she gritted what was her equivalent of teeth and choked out:

**Very well.**

Then she turned to her daughter to speak. 

_Oa:_

"Warworld is gone." 

It was Ganthet who informed his fellow Guardians of this, breathless, shaken.

"And it's gone in a manner where there is only one kind of being that could have done it."

The other Guardians nodded.

"Ragnarok is not to come for many billions of years hence when Sol devours its worlds."

They nodded in turn.

"Yet that is the power that destroyed it."

The chief of the Guardians prepared to speak when reality _twisted_ and a being stood before them. Tall and armored, skin a dark crimson hue with what was both hair and a strand of feathers in four lines on his head, a sense of weight deforming the universe only a little shy of the colossus that had tried to devour Earth-48 and the other 51 worlds with it.

The chief of the Monitors bowed before the Oans, the bow of a superior to his inferiors. The Guardians growled and bristled, not liking the truth in that even though it was truth.

**The legacy of the monster from beyond endures. The thing that destroyed Warworld is the detritus of it.**

"What kind of a force are we looking at?"

**One to which neither you, nor we, have an evident solution to it.**

He summoned a spherical portal that revealed the image of Karen Starr, who'd spent a few days around Jump City, simply learning more about the place she'd been called to. She was seen talking to a hulking construction worker with ginger head and a 19th Century Frenchman's beard, a style that he'd taken to wearing lately. 

**We do not, but she does.**

"How precisely do you know?" 

And then reality _twisted_ once more as one of the most powerful beings in creation, equal to the Monitors in raw power but seldom able to wield it in full, appeared. Destiny of the Endless looked at this _other_ kind of conclave.

_Because I spoke to the Monitors and I told them. This is the legacy of my own failings, and it is one that could have been more easily resolved were my younger sister inclined to speak to me._

He held in his hand an image with an ankh, the other holding his book.

_I have tried to speak to her by the portrait many a time and she does not respond._

He looked, with an eyeless face, toward the portal that showed Karen saluting and springboarding across the Bay toward the Tower and to the first steps of her own destiny, and unknowingly to an encounter with his own mother. Destiny winced, knowing that his mother's love, a thing that only he understood, was something even he could barely handle well. Death, more troubled than any of them knew, and wounded more deeply by that talk that had seen her mother strike her daughter, opening new wounds to add to the old. He had seen it, then, and knew how much trouble that moment portended.

In all truth he was grateful for Karen's presence, for absent this Night's attempts to be a person to those she had never quite tried and simply lacked the means or the knowledge to effectively be would have created a great storm of her own making.

As in the past all he could do was watch and carry secret joys and sorrows.

Then an idea occurred to him, and he saw that it did and for a change himself in his own book.

There was an eighth portrait now, the one who had been one of them and then changed.

When Night departed, for depart she would, he would use it and he would talk to his new sister, to see if she could offer advice.

This was less than a second as the conclave spoke quietly of means to seek to wield their powers to nudge fate, for as worlds burned, it would not merely be their eyes alone that turned to the monster that had shattered Warworld with the sword and the accursed enchantment she had called upon.

_Apokolips, Palace of Darkseid:_

Uxas leaned forward, his eyes turned to a starship where the vengeful blade of a dead world propelled itself on the fires of hate. 

Darkseid did what he did seldom. He smiled.

**Yes.....this one shows great promise.**

He turned to the least-loved and most disposable of his children. 

**Grayven, my son.**

The lesser image of himself knelt with a barely hidden contempt that made him ache to reach forward and smash his son's head into the floor purely to remind him that nothing he did was secret. 

**Go to Almerac, and find the entity that propels the Kryptonian starship. Bring her to me.**

Grayven hammered his hand against his chest. 

**As you will it, Father.**

And then in the flash of a Boom Tube he was gone.   
  
Kalibak strode forward. 

**Not sending me, Father?**

Darkseid shook his head. 

**That one won't listen** **easily and Grayven's latest scheme was so predictably disappointing. Drawing your sister and Granny Goodness into a scheme indeed.**

He snorted. 

**No, he is sent to be punished and to draw the beast into security. Only then, when she is at her calmest and her most assured as a God-Bane will I go to recruit her myself.**

Darkseid called up before his son a visualization of the world his understandings of the deeper metaphysics had shown him. 

The Litharge, the Tomb of the Endless.

**She goes there, to seek to draw on the powers therein to nourish the spell in that blade.**

His son surprised him with a question more astute than not: 

**Can she control whatever spell it is?**

Darkseid shrugged. 

**It matters not. It is no risk to our kind. Our souls are too great to be drawn into such a spell without it being connected to a force greater than what she has. The thing that sought to devour the Fifty One worlds could wield such enchantments, though it would find them a curious taboo to a thing otherwise bereft of such a concept. Her? She is a child wielding an adult's weapon without understanding. But such a weapon, my son. In the hands of a proper wielder....**

Uxas's eyes blazed brightly. 

**Our peace with New Genesis is tottering. If we are to go to war with Highfather once more, I want this one to be a weapon less on our side and more drawn into the new clash of worlds.**

Kalibak tapped his head.

**You called her a Godbane. Are you sure that she cannot harm us?**

Darkseid's grin was unpleasant. 

**Not as much as I should wish, my son. Hence sending the son I can afford to lose with the least sense of anything truthfully lost in the losing.**

**Even then, if she can harm those as you, she would not harm Izaya or myself, and this would remove a factor that would be drawn into a war of Gods like a gamma ray burst to an inhabited world.**

He laughed, a single peal of laughter that echoed like thunder and brought bolts of lightning in the smog-ridden skies of Apokolips, so recently scarred by clashes with entities greater than it was in raw power.   


**So either way, Darkseid is triumphant, and where Darkseid triumphs, so does Apokolips. You have won my favor, my son, in fighting one of the forces beyond the Wall and the Source who are greater in brute force than we are, though seldom willing to focus the whole of it.You made a thing that is to us of the Fourth World what the Spectre is to his victims bleed, and made it fear you. That has earned you my good grace.**

His burned with Hellfire.   


**Do nothing, son, to make me regret it.**

Kalibak nodded and bowed deeply.   


**As you will it, Father, so then shall it be done.**


	14. Secrets and Hidden Things:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeneli bilocates to the Litharge as she sends her ship en route to Almerac. 
> 
> Death and Night talk. 
> 
> The Endless family plan and plot together.

_Titans Tower, meeting room:_

The next morning, in the meeting room, Death sat on the left, her mother on the right. Death had with her Raven and Kori, and she felt a soft sting of mixed fear and amusement that here situations were reversed. Here it was not Raven, fearful of alienating a mother with great love in her heart, it was her. Speaking to a mother who had many things in her heart, but she was not certain love was any of them. Night looked at her loves strangely. Especially at Raven. 

**What is the mongrel doing here?**

Death's look of shock became one of anger. 

_**Excuse me?** _

**The mongrel, child. Daughter of Hell and Azarath and Earth. The one you diluted and polluted our family's bloodline therein by sharing your sphere and function with her.  
**

_**She's my girlfriend, mother, not a mongrel of any sort.** _

Night sniffed.

**I had no idea how poor your taste was. It was and is bad enough that your brother pines over so many unworthy and that your sibling strings them along for the sadistic thrill of it to experience by proxy what xie can never know. But this?**

Night shrugged. 

**How are you doing?**

Death shrugged. 

_**Waiting for you to fuck off the way you always do.** _

At that Night felt a bit of her inner rage, stoked by the sight of the mongrel's hand on her daughter's shoulder and the ease with which her daughter demeaned herself by caressing a being semi-adopted into her family and gaining power of her own nature she did not consider her worthy to possess boiling up and she moved with a surprisingly blinding speed and slapped her daughter again, much harder, seeking to force sense into her beautiful, if empty, head.

Death screamed in pain, her neck jerking and for a moment she remembered when she'd seen her other self.

_Clad in armor of deep shale hue, wielding a blade of pure darkness crackling with jagged edges of decay, the other Death grinned at her. There were streaks of darkness in her bone hue, jagged rifts that seemed to tear deep into her flesh. She was more piebald than anything else, and she had crushed part of her arm with the dreadful blade._

**_Is it not magnificent? This is what we can all be. Warlords. Conquerors. Of planets and of flesh. The demoness...._ **

_She did a chef's kiss. **No greater pleasure than to overawe that which can destroy worlds.**  
_

**_You're a monster.  
_ **

**_I am always within you, Fire-Refined, the monster within the woman._ **

_And then she backhanded her as she bled from her mouth, her right arm numb and in a horrific angle.  
_

**_Please, you're better than this._ **

_Only laughter followed and the blade was moved toward her chest, as another blade had been.  
_

Night paused, then, her finger on her chin. Her daughter had had a flashback of some sort, catatonic, and then there were shadows that were not of her making (and yet in the sense that Hell is a plane of darkness-and-fire, it was altogether hers at a much deeper level) as the ashen-hued creature with the red eyes, the mongrel, seemed to swell and alter, growing in size and power. 

_**Do not do that again.** _

The voice had a silky dangerous edge, the low cunning sound of a lady of Hell and its manifold planes of darkness and torment and wicked things.

Night sighed, pinching her nose, and then with a slight tug of a clenched fist the demoness was frozen into position, jaw locked, person caught in the very power which she had taken as her own.

**That would work with creatures of your order, little demon. I am not one. Don't do that again.**

She remained frozen and Night turned to her daughter, only for the Tower to tremble yet again at the sound of a knock, even as Starfire's hands blazed with a terrible light and she prepared to take an action that would have proven foolish. 

_Titans Tower, front door:_

Karen Starr felt like the world's biggest idiot. Here she was, in front of a giant tower shaped like a T, on the words of the eldest of the Endless, as if she could trust the Seven Primordials on anything. She knocked twice more, and then the door opened, as she saw a lithe green figure that was initially a gorilla and transformed back into a slender elfin figure with long pointy green ears. 

"Well you're prettier than the other one."

She gave him a hard look.

She remembered the Garfield Logan of her multiverse and of her universe. He was....well, his ears weren't pointed. That was the main difference.

"May I come in?"

He nodded, and then she heard the crackling sound of Tamaranean star-bolts and the low pained groan of.....

A flush briefly came to her cheeks as she remembered that night she'd gone clubbing and encountered the most fantastic lay of her life. She knew that voice well, and the thought that someone, anyone could hurt her....

_Titans Tower, meeting room:_

In a sudden seeming flash, a woman clad in a leotard with a hole that exposed part of her chest and a golden pauldron on her left shoulder levitated with gleaming eyes. 

"That's enough."

Night stared at her in curiosity, perusing her with a keen gaze and then her eyes went wide and in a sudden shift of darkness she was gone.

Kara looked at the semi-conscious woman in Raven's arms, a brief flush of an uglier jealousy flooding even as she knew that one encounter didn't mean more than that.

_**Power Girl?** _

That was Raven's voice, low and reverberating, with its raspy element and the mixture of Received Pronunciation and the raspier gangster sounds of Gotham City.

She nodded.

"What's going on?"

Raven sighed, ruefully. _**I wish I knew. So you're the latest one to jump in with us.**_

Kara scratched her head.

_**I want to make sure Tel's OK before I get into that story.** _

Kara nodded, then.

 _The_ Black Zero: 

The ship was en route to Almerac, moving at a slower speed than usual. That power which had hijacked it to steer it as it willed sat in a command throne, focusing on a task that the Endless took for granted, and that other traditions of magick did and could likewise.

She smiled, then, a fanged grin of magma marking a set of jagged lines in a black crevice.

_**To quote the works of the children of Israel, I bring Kefisatz Haderech.** _

A set of words poured from her mouth, low and guttural and echoing, and an angelic figure of fire and fury with six wings and sixty-six eyes formed, and then in a flash of light was in a world that was a world and in between all other realities and separate from all of them. 

A tomb, where the Endless ended.

_The Litharge:_

The Litharge was a place of mystery to most, for here it was that there were ceremonial garments made for the Endless if the core of their being should die, and where their bodies were laid rest when they did. Two of them laid in rest, one a being clad in dark clothes with dark hair, tall and gangly and only partially human-seeming in a human shape. Another was stout and nude, arms clutched at her chest to hide a horrific burned out hole that quite literally tore asunder her body. The Endless could not go here, reflected Yeneli as the bilocation she dispatched from the _Black Zero_ manifested in a swirl of fire not unlike the shape of a tornado of flames. 

The angelic shape faded into a duplicate of the figure that sat on the throne, golden armor marked with Muspell-runes, ornate scabbard coating a blade of Hellfire summoned by the runes worked into the blade. Skin of true-black, that which science did not allow for but magick cared not what science said, eyes of molten flame. She was a giant of hulking scale, her true nature unbound and yet in the Litharge she seemed mortal-scaled, next to Powers more ancient than she and yet younger. The Endless could not go where she was, in this place of fallen and forgotten points of view on concepts.

But nothing said, for those who were able to manifest within this place, that they could not. She drew her blade from her scabbard as she arrived, waiting with tension in her limbs. The Endless did have their wretched servant, but she saw no sigh of O'Shaugnessy. She was near the tombs, where Dream and Despair laid side by side, and saw five other spots, which intrigued her. Five spots and five sigils, and yet not one of them was the Ankh. She could smell Time and Night all over this, and she snorted. Her ex was right about one thing, those two had no comprehension of how to relate to people, let alone their own children. All this careful time and effort made to create tombs and forbidding their children to go near their corpses.

She knew that Death was not truthfully bound by these rules, so she wondered if Death had ever done this. If she came in quiet, pensively, seeking for a solace never hers to find. For a time she waited with a rune-adorned blade held in a grip of iron, her chest burning. Nothing happened. 

With that she willed the runes to gleam into activation and then there was a terrible glow, her blade's light shining brightly, a gleam of illumination and power and knowledge. Light dispelling darkness.

Her blade before her as a torch she strode past the tombs, down a great spiral. She did not think it was in the nature of the parents of the Endless to be so simple with the daughter they called the Exile. She remembered, too, the first time she'd seen her, when her throat was crushed and she was mute, and required to form words by simple uses of her power. Old feelings and old thoughts stirred where she did not want them to and it made her steps sharper. They did not echo, nor did she even hear her own footsteps. This too was a thing she sought to empower the strange enchantment she had learned. Her sword pulsed as she came closer to what she sought, winding her way down a set of steps of interminable length.

She was a Jotyn, a being who should have known no mere weariness from striding down stairs, no matter how long. And she was against a wall for a moment, panting like a mortal from exhaustion, the blade still held before her and burning, a sharp spike of pain impaling her more mercilessly than the spear Gungnir could. She gritted her teeth and made herself stride forward. Eighteen more flights did she tread, or so it seemed, and then there she was. A vast jewel-adorned door, marked with various runes in gold and emerald and sapphire and rubies. Its centerpiece was the missing sigil, the ankh.

Time and Night's gift in honor of the child they had thrown from their realm and muted her for her first hundred million years in this universe. Now the light changed from illumination to its truer and holier purpose. World-Destruction, the apex of the creation-destruction impulse from their Father-Creator, the Lord of the Blade. The power blazed out and then it tapped against the door and the wards of Time and Night flashed into being.

She smiled more coldly and then eschewing the other arts she had begun to delve into, placed the full weight of her being and her ancient nature against the power of the Time and Night of thirteen thousand, three hundred and sixty-two universes since. Hers was a kind of being with no analogies in this world. A thing of an ancient multiverse, empowered in a manner that nothing of this one save the one who had denied her an ending ( a favor she no longer considered reciprocal) could match. The wards of Time and Night would have been impenetrable even to her and to her kind of this universe. They were cunning, locks within locks within locks, legacies of plans within plans within plans.

And yet she was not of this reality nor its associated hypertime divergences, nor its linked multiverse. The hellish fires of Muspell blazed and then the wards shattered in an eruption of light and darkness, the door exploding outward in a shrapnel that a hastily summoned shield of fire ensured melted around her without piercing her flesh.

Into the domain she strode, and as she stared at something surprising, she realized something that Time and Night had done for their child that they would never, ever tell her. When she strode further into the place, she paused. Something strange. A lock of hair....no. A ponytail, the legacy of her counterpart's childhood, shorn from her in the fall from the realm from whence she'd come in the most ancient of days.

A lock of her hair, just the sort of thing to fuel the thing which she had discovered on a venture with Lobo, before her strange benefactor had given her wisdom and the keys to understand it.

**_Found the lock, and with it the key._ **

A mad lilting giggle in her voice, she strode out with determination and blazing eyes.

_Titans Tower, Raven's Bedroom:_

Power Girl had set herself up in the guest room with remarkable nonchalance, bonding with Kon all the while. Tim would have been jealous and worried if not for knowing just how utterly gay Kon was. Kon was the only man who could see Karen's remarkable nonchalance about her own body and flagrant lack of concern for how others might see it and shrug, understanding something of the sorrows she carried, though not agreeing with the what and how she went about solving them. Raven didn't care so much about their latest guest. No malevolent nor benevolent, for that matter, god here. Just a woman who carried her own sorrows. 

Another such woman was bound on her bed, by ropes marked with mystic wards, bound with her hands on her headboard.

Kori was levitating, her legs around Death's shoulders as the Endless gleefully let herself go, exorcising deep sorrows in a more desperate kind of fashion. Raven was never particularly over-fond of Death slaking her worries in this way. It spoke of the things that had driven her away from her function and given Raven the knowledge that coursed through her at times, shaking her.

She had a strap-on attached by magic, one of the organic ones. The ones that could cum like a real cock and felt just like one, too. She stroked it a bit, savoring the kind of feel, and was soon tapping it against Death's pussy, relishing the way the Endless's body trembled.

Before Death had come into her room and made that pact, her sexuality had been an uneven thing explored behind multiple filters and fears, some of Azarath and the knowledge of her conception and what it had done to her mother and what it said of her. Now there was this. There was one of the Seven in her bed, letting her slip inside of her, giving her Kori in a way she had never imagined. Showing her that she was not the monster she feared, that she could indulge in her more fearsome and darker side without fear of it overwhelming the rest of who she was.

She could feel the warmth of Death and who Death was and what she was.

Her hands could and did reach out even to the damaged arm Death had, and where Death reacted badly to the caress of others, she did not to her, or to Kori. Raven's hands were gleaming blue as they caressed her, souls reaching out and joining, her body moving in unity with Death's, Death feeling the pleasant burn of Koriand'r's legs against her thighs.

She never quite could tell the lapse of time between the number of orgasms she always managed to caress and to quite literally squeeze from Death, only that she was within her and felt a union of things that her time as the mistress of the Sunless Lands had tilted, slightly. Death felt even better, in various ways as Raven angled herself and thrust with power and authority that Death had never imagined anyone could possess, her hands marking along her body and within the very nature of her being, even as she gave more deeply into and with Kori. Their date the other day amplified her willingness to give in, to let herself be in this blessed interlude where the weight of her being and her sorrows faded.

Raven's soul merged with hers, Kori's pleasure was a heady drug that had sharp effects that did not fade, not swiftly, nor readily.

She let herself be and go within the moment, and then there was a subtle, soft change in her body that would be something imperceptible for a time, but marked a shift in her life and in her being that she could never have imagined.

When their time was done, she was between Kori and Raven, their hands intertwined, and her eyes staring. Across countless worlds parts of her were fulfilling her function, and mortals stared at her often with the usual anger and guilt, but a surprising amount saw the damage to her body and looked with a mixture in a few cases of mockery and contempt and cutting laughter, but most often of worry and sorrow and even pity. The children in particular, yes, but even the hardened and more brutal types winced and said 'If even you aren't immune to being hurt....'

For the first time, in countless lives, she began to feel as if she was a person and not a thing of hatred, and part of her hurts that was deeper and rooted in that very first universe began to shift. and she felt a warmth in her that had nothing to do with Raven.

_The Dreaming:_

The last time that Dream of the Endless had spent any real time with his youngest sister, it had ended poorly. They had found their lost brother and then they had become engulfed in the more sorrowful and dreadful things, and then Dream had become who he was now. They had not spoken since then, because his sister thought he was angry at her for the nature of his change. In truth he was grateful, if not for her his plan would have faltered in the last stretch. Part of him wondered if Death had ever let herself be captured rather than him in any universe, and what might have happened if she had. 

Morpheus had died from his own hand, and he was still Dream, so he had no true reason to be wrathful where his sister Delirium was concerned, and so she was playing in what was the successor to Fiddler's Green. Not quite a person, not yet, but the most beautiful portion of his realm.

_**I HeLpEd HeR.** _

**Who, Del?**

_**OuR siSTeR. ThE WiTcH waNTeD tO gRiNd HeR bONeS anD mAkE BReaD. ShE woN't HuRt uS aNyMoRe.** _

Dream gave her a faint smile and shook his head. Del said the strangest things sometimes.

_The Garden of the Forking Ways:_

Destiny of the Endless paced in his garden. He had seen how his mother had reacted to Death's not taking well her attempts to reach out after so long, and he knew something of how unpleasant things could be. He had three or four of himself at present, so he also understood that this was a chance for what moments of freedom he had absent the Outsiders 'gracing' their corner of Existence with their presence. 

He went from his garden to his gallery, where he touched the new portrait, the eighth, right on the Garuda symbol.

_Sister, I hold your sigil in my gallery. Will you speak to me?_

_Titans Tower, Raven's Bedroom:_

In the small hours of the morning Raven's portrait gleamed and she found herself slipping out of Death's arms and Kori's to go to it. Death looked at her with worry, but she gave her a gesture of peace and mouthed to her to stay with Kori. Unhappily, Death sighed and then complied, and she gave her a faint smile. It had been a time since she had been there, seemingly, even when in truth it was no time at all. Through the looking glass she stepped. 

_The Garden of the Forking Ways:_

Raven, formerly of the Endless stepped in through a portal, her hood up and her eyes gleaming white in its darkness. 

_**Destiny,**_ she spoke in the voice of the ruler of the Eighth Circle. _**To what do I owe the pleasure?**_

He pointed to a chair in a very Ingmar Bergman fashion and hesitantly she took it, and then her eyes went wide with genuine fear and consternation at the sight of eight Destinies, and the understanding of what that meant. He spoke to her quietly, of what it was that he could tell her to shape events, and Raven listened with stiff bodies and slight fidgets.

Then he'd asked her a couple of questions about dear Tel and she'd answered them much more firmly, with an edge of rudness, and then teleported away. Like Hell would she let that old hooded bastard get any information from her. Part of her still felt furious beyond words at his manipulation and like answering any questions he asked would betray her beautiful Tel, and so she'd answered curtly and then vanished.

Destiny stared. Still eight of him.

He looked to his book, where the panels unfolded, and resumed reading as it dictated.

_Titans Tower sparring ring:_

Blackfire had never really fought a Kryptonian, let alone _this_ Kryptonian. But what she knew of Superman and Supergirl and that _other_ Power Girl said they had sharper limits. This one was more nearly God than woman, none of her blows connected except that she deliberately moved slow and her strength even heavily pulled was enough to wind Blackfire harder than any exercise of Okaara did. She relished it all the same. Her sister was aberrant among Tamaraneans in having an excess of conscience and compassion. She was far more typical of her kind and the way she gave it her all and savored that the Kryptonian who effortlessly withstood it and gave every indication of finding elements of her own likewise displayed something of a reckless, even aggressive streak. 

"I like this," growled Blackfire.

All that did was get her a slight lip-quirk and the glorious sensation of sparring a physical deity on more or less equal terms.

_The Sunless Lands:_

Death lay curled up on her couch, holding Cavendish. There was a part of her that regularly let herself go with Raven, and there were the parts of her that worked, but the rest of her was shaken between everything else that happened. Every single portrait in her gallery save Raven's gleamed with light in the dark of her place (her fish she'd sent to Dream to ensure they were OK, she did not want to take Slim or Wandsworth). She was just....there. Just existing. So she had been, for a long time. 

And then she felt something strange, in her arm, after another night on Earth-48 in its delicious debauchery.

She looked at her arm and stared in mute shock. The gruesome mutilation carved into it by the blade had _shrunk_ and the wound on her back _was gone._ She was feeling _sensation_ where there had been less than numbness.

She sat up, for the first time in weeks. Now this....

She strode into her gallery and stood indecisive, biting her finger with one of her teeth.

And as she stood there, the last of the portraits before the new one with the garuda that wasn't really needed erupted in a shower of rainbows and she was suddenly on her back, tackled by a younger sister weeping rainbow tears of joy.

_Raven's Bedroom:_

Raven stepped into the bedroom to find Kori in the shower (and enjoyed the sight with a crude leer on her face) and Death sitting up on the bed, a soft warm smile on her face. 

She traversed Death's body, hearing her gasping in awe as she felt her back, and seeing her touching a deep jagged black line on her-

Raven's eyes went very wide.

_**How in the Hell?** _

Death grinned.

_**Whatever you did last night, with the healing thing....** _

She flexed her arm.

_**I have feeling in both arms again. Oh Raven, Thank you!** _

And then she pulled Raven into a deep and passionate kiss, one that meant that her morning proved rather lazier than expected in the most enjoyable sense of that word.


	15. 'Muspelheim is a realm of Fire, and Surtr stands guard before it. Only those born there can endure it.'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grayven has a remarkably clever idea that ends up going very differently to what he expected. 
> 
> Death meets with Hazel MacNamara and then the Titans have a blast from the past.

_HIVE Headquarters:_

Once known as the HIVE, the redubbed Furious Five had changed in the years since Jinx had reformed and joined the other side. Led by Mikron O'Geneus, the new team, with Mammoth, his sister Shimmer. Arthur Light (who had regained his original memories and kept slavering like a hound dog at the sight of the girl they were seeking to abduct), and Billy Numerous, it had gone underground in the time since the onslaught by the thing that had sought to devour the Fifty-One worlds. Most supervillains had, it was hard to get the motivation to act when encountering a being from another dimension who looked at the Fifty One Worlds (once Fifty Two but even they didn't really mourn the world where the Nazis were) and sought to devour them. When Raven had vanished they'd appeared from time to time but otherwise spent more time facing the new team Young Justice, and the revived Justice Society.

Five years of her vanishing and the degree to which Starfire, of all superheroes, had proven a dangerous and terrifying beserker slipping back on her old instincts. Five years when she vanished and her girlfriend Didi, whom they'd planned this before the big vanishing, had vanished with her. Now she'd returned and Didi D'Eath had too, complete with a gruesome injury on her right arm.

"You're sure about this?"

It was not like Mammoth to question things so much, but then it was understandable. Raven was terrifying even before the literal Old Gods had come to town and played havoc with the city and proven the Fourth World and Themyscira were not, after all, the only tangible deities. With a malicious smirk he pulled up her image purely to see Arthur Light go from slavering with a thing he did not need to see and would need brain bleach and metric tons of it to unsee to pale and shivering and murmuring "Shadowsshadowshadows."

Arthur's....tastes...had seen women hurt and that was a bad business, but since his recovery he'd proven alarmingly good at things. More's the pity, he hadn't shown any signs of infection by the eldritch nightmare that had sought to devour the multiverse or they'dve found a way to land him in front of the Hulk. The reminder that the one who more than any other could restrain him was there was good. He had a feeling that Didi, if she was all she seemed, would need it.

"No, Baran, I'm not sure. But...."

He pulled her image back up, ignoring the shivering and mewling Doctor Light behind him.

"That woman has some kind of connection to Raven."

"We...didn't exactly abduct Sarah Simms or their other girlfriends."

"Well, no, numb nuts. We didn't. Most of them would have been a challenge to abduct. But this one...."

His eyes went back to the image of a silver sigil around her neck, and then to a page of an online copy of a grimoire, the _Magdalenian Grimoire_ connected with fantastic events in 1908 in the Birmingham countryside.

"I think there's more to her than meets the eye." He smiled nastily. Jinx would approve, him branching out into magic.

 _The_ Black Zero, _Training chamber:_

The Boom Tube went off with a flash of blinding light and a rush of wind, as Yeneli cocked her head in curiosity. 

This was new.

From it stepped a towering being little shorter than she was in this shape, one that was more reflective of her truth. More the stamped image in molten magma of World-Destruction, loosely anthropoid, very loosely.

This thing of equal size was pale grey, not like the demoness-whelp who'd cursed her with the life for a life factor, but a stranger shade. Nothing demonic here. His eyes gleamed red, and he smiled, coldly.

**I am Grayven, son of Darkseid, King of Apokolips.**

His voice boomed with a rolling echo and she narrowed her eyes as she suddenly called to herself her sword and her scabbard, and formed her golden armor around her. He grinned. She was afraid of him and of his nature, good. 

_**I'm sorry, is that supposed to mean something to me?** _

**You do not know Darkseid? Darkseid is!  
**

_**Is what, exactly? Dark Side? I......who has that for a name?** _

He snarled.

**Darkseid is. He is lord of the Gods of Apokolips, forever waging the wars of the Fourth World with Highfather of New Genesis.**

Again the whelp puffed himself up on glory that was not his to claim.

Yeneli's eyes narrowed.

_**Oh, that explains it.** _

Her face broke into an inhuman grin and for a moment she was a towering hulking vaguely feminine shaped mass of fire and plasma with coalfire eyes.

 _ **Yes, you see,**_ she giggled with a mad warbling sound, _**I am not of the New Gods of the Fourth World. My kind are old, we are older than the old gods. To the Greeks we'd be Protogenoi, I suppose. The sons of Hellas do have names that sound fine and translate in such prosaic fashion. We are the sons and daughters of the World-Destroyers, whose flames clashed with the venomed ice of Niflheim, land of the Frost Giants. By us were worlds made, but we were there first, and we won that war, and we shall win the next at Ragnarok when nine worlds burn and are reshaped, coated in ice and the ice shattered by flame.**_

 _ **So I didn't recognize the energy signature, not then.**_ The mad warbling giggle again, a sound eeriely high-pitched as the form of fire became a form reminding him of Grail, if his sister were a towering giant made of magma shaped into a human-ish shape. _**But in a time before time, before the Earth was out of its Hadean epoch, I slew Despair of the Endless, killed her on my blade, burned her alive and reshaped reality so hard variants of me have become integrated into it. In this timeline, I was a man, of all things. How disgusting!**_

She laughed, the mad warble becoming lower and like the sound of boulders cracking.

_**I created your Godwave, the Source reacting in agony to the death of one of the Primordial Seven that it had not known could be slain. Created it to a point that it is woven into the pattern of the material backdrop of all existence. In a sense, you are all my children, you of your childishly-named worlds.** _

She drew a sword from its scabbard and he huffed.

_**We children of World-Destruction, we are God-killers. Uncle Surtr will slay Freyr of Vanaheim, King of the Ljossalfar on the day of doom. Others shall slay other Gods, and only those writ to be the next Aesir and Vanir and other such wondrous kindred shall live and the rest burn in fire. God-killers much as the blade of the Amazonian.** _

The runes on the blade burbled with fire and then he screamed as the light ripped into him and he fell to his knees and exposed to her the fullness of the realm of Darkseid and all that lurked therein.

Her smile was unkind.

_**Ah, so that is one of my creations. I'll have to see about fixing that.** _

As he knelt with his eyes that blazed with the Omega Effect melted and parts of his body burned to bleached bone and the rest having skin dripping off of it, she took her blade and in a sudden set of slices left him fallen to the floor, kneeling beside his severed head and releasing a blast of flame that left a god-skull there.

She could feel Grayven retaking shape in Apokolips, the _true_ Apokolips.

Even so, she would add her first God-skull to her collection. Now the hunting was getting good.

Almerac next, and then.....her smile was a nightmarish streak of molten red against a face marked with cracks of magma in infinite darkness.

Then the God-burner would go to burn another realm of Gods, one cthonic and flame-ridden.

 _ **Just like home,**_ she cooed and sang an old war-song of her people, of the time when the Gjallar-horn would echo and as Loki and his treacherous dogs took the van, theirs would be the wall of fire coming to burn the traitor and the loyal alike, for fire cares not what burns, only that it does burn.

_Apokolips:_

Grayven found himself kneeling and shivering. 

**Son?**

Oh shit, he was in his father's throneroom. 

**She is not yet at Almerac. Let me guess, you took it on yourself to take the initiative and to bring her here thinking that you were facing something simple. You, in short, failed me more swiftly than Kalibak would have done.**

_Father?  
_

Darkseid turned to Granny Goodness.

**Take him to the House of Pain, make sure he feels it. Such is the mercy of Darkseid.**

The bloated hag that looked at him with her triple-chins in a terrible grin turned after bowing before Darkseid. 

As she had him dragged by his collar, she spoke into his mind:

_Is it not a magnificent thing that I, Granny Goodness, do?_

_The Dreaming, Palace of Dream of the Endless:  
_

Muspelheim had sent him embassies all of five times in his long lifetime (and he had never thought to ask his sister how many times in thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty two prior universes it had done. Less than a hundred, if he was overly generous). 

Now it had sent a sixth. A slender thing, seemingly a candlelight.

She bowed, deeply.

**I am the Lady Karu, of the King's Supreme Command of his armed forces. Lord Surtr wishes to speak to you. It is about his late niece, our fallen Sorceress-Supreme who was interned, so he learned from fire-gazing, in a book in your world, even as we know that she has become our secret shame and Despair herself.**

The candle-light rose. 

**My master wants to know what that means, and why she has not faded away with the rest of the traces of the beast's rampage.**

Dream steepled his fingers. 

**Very well. Tell King Surtr he may speak to me, then.**

Karu bowed again. 

**On the morrow, my master will appear in your throneroom, Lord Shaper. You have our thanks and our gratitude, as is only fitting for the brother of our God and our Maker.**

Dream stiffened. 

**Do you know not, Lord Shaper? It is your brother you call the Prodigal who made us all, we were and are his crowning pride and joy. World-Destruction that recreates whatever it burns in a refined fashion.**

Dream stared, blankly, his stoic facade cracked asunder as he gave a single sharp swift nod. 

With that he stood up from his throneroom.

**Do I have any other business, Lucien?**

His chief minister of the Dreaming and his librarian of the gallery of unwritten books shook his head. 

"No, my lord."

Dream's jaw was tight.

"I will have words with my brother."

And in a flash of light he was gone.

_Construction Site, Jump City Waterfront:_

Destruction of the Endless gave a very deep rumbling sigh as he felt that tug of energy. He had a pretty bad feeling what this was about, and why it was here. 

And indeed, in a kaleidoscopic cloud there formed the white-clad and bone-hued hair and skin color alike form of his brother, a look of anger more intense than that of Morpheus on his face.

**Brother, Muspelheim is your creation, is it not?**

Out of all the things that he'd expected, in retrospect, it was not this. He'd expected more of a question of how he, with all his exile, wasn't a bigger coward than anyone except their parents given his fine words and completely detached deeds. That would have been Dream as much as Desire, for both resented his choice and both found their own ways to blame him for their mistakes and those of others. 

_Yes, brother. An early one. A realm in my image and in my likeness, reflecting my function at its core._

Then his eyes widened.

_You speak of the creature that is drawing on the power of my function and destroyed that massive satellite Mongul used. And is on its way to Almerac._

Dream nodded.

**The creature that murdered one of our sisters and almost murdered our older sister twice-over. She's coming for her skull again. I don't need Destiny's foresight to know it.**

Destruction sat up ramrod straight. 

_Let me get this straight,_ he stared blankly. _A creature specializing in killing gods is coming for our suicidal sister whose recovery is at best fragile and who has symptoms of mental damage her presence can only exacerbate?_

Dream nodded.

Destruction growled and then reached for his blade only for Destiny to suddenly manifest before them both and for them to find themselves caught in a timeless space just above his Garden of the Forking Ways, in a demonstration of just how much power his unlovely eldest brother truly had.

_Afternoon, Jump City, Lenore Cafe:_

Hazel MacNamara was one of the few people who could say that she had encountered Death herself multiple times, the second and third times fully aware of just what she'd encountered at a superficial level, if not a deeper one. For all that Fox still felt shame about cheating on her with those women in her rock star days (and in truth she didn't really care about that. Leaving aside her biased view of how beautiful her Foxy lady was, if she didn't pick up people and enjoy the perks of what she was she would have been more surprised and even slightly concerned than if she had).....it was Hazel whose cheating had altered their lives more.

Once, physically, with a man. And then emotionally with the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, a being of warmth and kindness and ruling a realm dark and cold and nightmarish beyond a realm of Nightmares. And again in dreams and in a strange set of encounters that still set a quiet flush in her and yet she'd wondered if the being whose name she dared not speak in truth had felt anything.

Now here she was, at a cafe, having tea with a woman whose last name was her idea of a joke. It gave her a small sense of amusement and a very grim sense of trepidation that an ancient being like Death had such a feeble sense of humor at times.

"Shouldn't there be a chessboard and Ingmar Bergman music here?"

The woman beside her laughed, musically.

_**Mortals do imagine the strangest things about me.** _

Hazel nodded.

"I'll concede that one."

She cocked her head.

"I did read the Bible at one point when Fox and I were staying in a hotel on one of our trips. There's a passage in the book of Revelations," she began, her eyes looking at an ugly black scar that forked like a lightning bolt down Death's arm, ending above the wrist, wanting to ask but not daring to lest she revert back to a cemetery and her little boy there and all that turn out to be a very long and strange dream.

"About a rider on a pale horse."

Didi smiled, with a crooked grin.

 _ **I do have a form like that but I'm not going to show it to you. That form.....**_ she clicked her teeth. **_The mortal just said a rider, but let's just say that there was more to it than that._**

Hazel nodded, and then Death leaned forward and asked her about Alfie with a tone that was too calm for her and she leaned forward, the two becoming lost in the conversation.

Mikron and Shimmer watched, the bugged table recording the conversations.

Both of them were entranced at the pale woman's voice, it sounded strangely and achingly familiar, especially to Shimmer, who couldn't quite place why.

"Who's that mannish broad?"

"Who gives a flying fuck," growled Mikron.

"She's a nobody. We don't care about her. Don't kill her, either, the Titans really don't like that and we don't need them getting up our asses over collateral damage again. Your brother has just finished healing the burns Starfire gave him over that,"

Shimmer bit her lip, briefly freezing in a flashback.

Mikron's hand was on her back in sympathy, and then he slipped into becoming Gizmo.

"Mammoth, you're up."

The two women were laughing over a story about a teenage Alvie and his encounter with another rock star's kid, this one somewhat older and fresh out of a day of filming a movie, when a massive shadow towered over them.

"What the fuck?"

Hazel's eyes bugged out.

"Nothing personal, kid," growled Baran Flinders.

"Kid?" She was outraged and then she saw Mammoth's hand reach out and lightly clasp around Death's throat.

She expected her to pass out or worse, and was awed at a different level to see how remarkably unaffected Death actually was, and then she saw her mouthing 'run. These are supervillains from this city's underworld. They don't have the best record of respecting civilians. Look around you' and then she joined the crowd of people fleeing. 

Mammoth grinned then and his fist struck Death's head.

She felt nothing, could have fought it and revealed the full truth of who and what she was and how utterly and completely futile it was to even try this.

Her wound in her arm throbbed and her chest burned and she simply let herself pass out.

Slung over Mammoth's shoulder, as he shivered like he'd felt a strange brush with his own mortality that reached into the very marrow of his physical being, he stalked off. Nice and bloodless. What could Gizmo object to there?

_Cell in the HIVE Base:_

Death woke up tied down, arms over her head. 

"That was beautiful," she heard a man in a dark suit with white globes on his armor say.

"You looked just ravishing on camera. And you, my beauty, are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

His hand brushed the scar on her arm.

"Your imperfections only make you moreso."

She was revolted when he leaned down and gave her a deep and unpleasant and unwanted forcible kiss, the first she'd ever had from a mortal in this world.

Then Arthur Light moved away, grinning at her.

"The Titans better hope they find you soon, or the little demon bitch that hurt me is going to find her girlfriend a lot straighter than when I last saw her."

And he leaned down to try to intimidate her. When he saw how utterly unafraid she truthfully was, he snarled and placed his finger in her mouth, brushing along her cheeks and fired a beam against her left cheek at full strength.

He froze when he realized the cheek was _completely unharmed_ and withdrew his finger with almost unseemly haste.

"Well, aren't you full of surprises?"

He then whispered into her ear.

"The Hell with whether or not she finds you," he grinned.

"I'm going to have my fun as soon as I can arrange for a bit of alone time with our new prisoner."

Death looked at her chains.

OK, maybe she _would_ reveal some of the truth. This little shit was the one Raven had spoken to her of in quiet terms, one who'd hurt her, who had made his filth his calling card to boast about.

This......

She sighed.

And then from her peripheral vision she saw two shadows and golden eyes.


	16. "Creeps in this petty pace from day to day."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death of the Endless and Arthur Light face off in the HIVE base. 
> 
> Blackfire makes a decision. 
> 
> Almerac burns. 
> 
> A sister and a sibling speak.

_TItans Tower Meeting Room:_

"Hello shit-eaters!" It was the obnoxious reedy voice of Mikron O'Geneus that snarked out onto their screen in front of them, the little midget hovering on his pack.

"As you can see, we've got a little guest here."

The camera panned to show Death, as they knew her, held captive, giving the camera a defiant stare. That was something expected. The door opening in the cell to show Arthur Light in proximity, however.....

Gizmo himself, to his credit, looked very uneasy at that point and rattled off a set of quick demands and then the camera showed Mammoth ducking his head and his arm in and quite literally dragging the Doctor away after he'd kissed Death in front of the camera.

"D-D-Don't worry. We'll keep him away from her."

And then he put on a persona that was so transparently one it dented the image he hoped to convey.

"At least if you're sufficiently willing to do as we tell you."

He did not know nor notice that Raven had reacted with a stiff blank horror at the sight, one matched by Kori, and that Kori had gone with her as she meditated to control her feelings. The last thing Raven needed was to simply storm the gates of the HIVE building (remembering this place from a singular time when she'd had amnesia and been taken in by Jinx before her switching sides) in a full on demonic fury. In that kind of mode they would be lucky if she _did_ kill them and she did not need that on her conscience.

Blackfire had seen the micro-expressions and followed Starfire, whispering that when, not if, they left whatever else the team said that she would go with them.

Starfire accepted this with a nod and the savage grin of anticipation on her sister's face led to a surprising set of emotions in her own she didn't have the immediate time to process.

_HIVE Headquarters:_

"Are you fucking batshit?"

Arthur Light had his arms crossed.

"You know what it is that I am famous for. Well, one of the things, in any event. You have brought the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and the girlfriend of the dark lady of my own nightmares here."

Arthur Light leaned forward.

"And you know that even if your gorilla killed me for the effort that I can and I will kill you and his sister before he has the intellectual capacity to comprehend this, by which point he will be trapped and left framed for the Titans to find the evidence. You hired me, Mikron. You don't get to tell me not to do the things you knew I do as if you have a moral high ground here."

Arthur leaned forward still further.

"Besides, my friend the Eremite mentioned to me an encounter from a few decades ago with someone much like her. She may look like a teenager, but she is not one."

Mikron rolled his eyes. "So what did the blind freak tell you?" 

"That for a certain turn of phrase, you have Death herself chained up in your basement like a dime-sized Roderick Burgess. You have done what Burgess never dared to do."

Mikron stared mutely.

"And if you don't mind, given that I died a mental and then a physical death two or three times, I intend to give her a piece of my own mind. I'll be able to have the satisfaction of knowing Death herself won't be able to turn on a lightbulb without thinking of me."

And with that he stormed off.

_HIVE Interrogation Room:_

Desire stared at Death in concern. 

_Sister? _

Xir words had a slight tremor to them that xie did not like but xie could not blame xirself for it.

_**What do you want?** _

She seemed slumped, broken.

_If you are asking if I appeared here because you accessed my sphere, that is not so. I am here because of the other one. This....Doctor Light. When I saw the what and the who..._

Death's gaze seemed broken and she looked away.

_I know he kissed you. I know you've got....issues. Here. But there is no true name factor here, sister. You have no mortal to protect. Take the chance to get some of your own back instead of suffering because you feel you deserve it._

Death's glare was hostile.

_**Don't you think I do? You literally used your damned Mercy on me, in your idea of 'helping.' You showed me my first family and having a kid, giving life to something of my own instead of something for someone else, purely to 'help' me. I know you think I do, don't project your feelings in addition to my own.** _

Desire flinched. _All this time I thought it was because of my messing with my brother._

**_That's part of it, brother-sister, by no means all of it.  
_ **

Then the door opened. 

"So Death talks to herself, then?" The voice of Arthur Light was gloating.

"I hope you understand, my dear," he spoke with a gloating sing-song tilt to his voice, "that this is entirely personal."

Desire seemed to fade to invisiblity as he started to move his hands up and down Death's body.

She was one of the seven mightiest beings in the multiverse and yet, as it had been that day when the demon had leered at her with four golden eyes, her response was not to call upon any of her powers but to freeze. Only tremors in her body affected things as she felt his hands roaming up and down her body, endured more of his dreadful kisses, and then felt him hiking up her top and starting to fiddle with her belt, his hands groping her in ways that she did not want to-

Then the shadows in the room darkened and there were low guttural sepulchral moans.

 _Almerac Orbit,_ Black Zero _bridge:_

**_I want you to watch this, Dru-Zod of Kandor. You and your refuse of the dead world._ **

The creature that looked at them smiled with a cruel grin that reached from ear to ear. 

_**I will show you exactly what I am, and what it is that I can do.** _

In a flash of fire she was floating over the planet in orbit and let herself grow and swell with the fires of World-Destruction that gleamed with her body and within her body. A towering giant many times larger than the Black Zero levitated in orbit, clad in golden armor of a forge much older than this world, her body in a cruciform posture, her gauntlets turned upright, power surging into and around them. Down she descended, and around her billowed fire and smoke, an avenging force of terror and horror falling upon a world with power to lay low worlds.

_HIVE Base:_

The Fearsome Five did not detect Raven immediately, even when her powers filled their interrogation room with a living snarling darkness. Nor did they detect the gleaming starbolt-fury of Starfire. 

They were a little distracted when the base quivered like it had taken a sharp kick from a giant. Then purple flames like Starfire's own began to burn and to dissolve away the building.

"Huh? Blackfire, what?"

_Almerac:_

Something was falling from the sky over Almerac, in a cruciform posture that meant it fell like a meteor trailing smoke and fire. It was on a direct track for Tae Damrac, and it was with that sight and that vision that Maxima, the planet's Queen, spoke: 

<Order the Guns to fire. Destroy whatever that is and don't let it make planetfall,>

Weapons rose on anti-grav platforms. Some fired bolts of plasma, others more esoteric weapons. Lightning-like graviton beams, the concentrated power of stars harvested and forming arcing swords of flame. Hard-light constructs patterned after those created by the Rings of Power. Strands of light and objects of brute concussive force that slammed with power that stretched the limits of both physics and super-physics. Blow upon blow, as fire fell from Heaven.

_HIVE Interrogation Room:_

Death did not know much of the history of Raven and Arthur Light and would only learn most of it after the fact, so she had no means to truthfully know even with her brand of knowledge, nor opportunity to search that Arthur Light slipping his hand where he did and pulling her into a kiss as the shadows formed Raven on the left and the gleaming light of Starfire on the right, that he was not motivated by anything but a desire to spite Raven by knowing his hands had been where they were. 

For his own part he did not realize that the mixture of shame and the old freeze-response that had held her faded when she knew the people who loved her were there, and then he was stunned. Raven was terrifying, yet in a second the chains, chains powerful enough even a Kryptonian or Starfire in a full rage would have struggled to move them, were ashes and dust that fell from below.

Then he felt a hand in a glove grasp him in a grip of iron as his suit's powers failed, and he looked at two eyes that gleamed not with the infinite darkness of Didi D'Eath but a bright and burning gold, and then a wrist flicked and there was a sharp pain of impact and nothing.

It would take him two and a half years to get out of the ICU he was in from the impact. None were especially disposed to help him during that time, either.

Death glowered at him, and then flushed and looked away, realizing her shirt was still up and her pants undone and pulled down. She turned to get her clothes in order, as Starfire's rage increased and she blasted open the wall and flew to match her sister.

_HIVE meeting room:_

"Blackfire, what a pleasant surprise! We haven't seen you since the Wildfire business!" 

Blackfire met Gizmo's gaze with the old smile, the sadistic one.

"I remember. Problem for you is you abducted my sister's girlfriend."

Gizmo's eyes bugged out of his head.

"Well fuck me."

Then Mammoth stepped up and in front of his sister, glowering at her.

"What, are ya pissed we didn't get ya into the plan?"

Blackfire's fury surged the greater and then in a single crunching moment of impact Mammoth felt a sharp impact to the face and found himself face-first near Titans Tower, a broken nose exploding with dirt and blood, a few of his teeth cracked, Little birds chirped and all he knew as the impact faded into unconsciousness was a pair of hovering blue boots.

Shimmer stared in mute horror at the impact as Blackfire turned to her, her hands sparking.

It was then that Billy Numerous began to multiply, as she sighed.

_Hak'tal b'ktur!_

Then she unleashed her starbolt, not to kill but to burn, to wage an attrition struggle against his clones. Shimmer and Gizmo prepared to move then only for the shadows to deepen, as the Billys froze and her starbolt for a second cut off, and then she landed on the floor, the righteous fury drained out of her.

Raven, Starfire, and Death moved in. Death was quiet, detached, almost shamed, if such a concept could feel shame.

The shadows that reached out were Raven's, and in the low and sepulchral groans there was a _power_ Blackfire had but glimpsed distantly.

Then the shadows _moved_ and in the ensuing scene Blackfire found herself floating to try to not be near such devastating force, before returning after.

The shadows were dissipated, the Fearsome Five beaten, Doctor Light in particular looking like he'd run into a mack truck. He didn't have the shivers of Raven's power and that led her to appraise Death more carefully.

Even then the other woman did not meet her gaze.

Hmm.....

For his own part, Doctor Light remained in a semi-conscious state for a time until he reached a jail cell, when he fell into a very deep sleep. Into the land of Dreaming, and the sphere of Nightmare.

Now _he_ was the one entrapped on a slab, his hands and feet held away.

He was in a room with a very tall man with platinum-blonde hair and sunglasses. The man wore a white shirt, and was thickly built, very well muscled.

He seemed to breathe not once but thrice. the second and third breaths with a light eerie whistling sound relative to the first. How was he _doing_ that?

**I would say my lord and master and maker Dream of the Endless sends his regards, but he did not have to do so. Not by me.**

The Corinthian leaned over next to him. 

**You hurt my lord's sister. The only one of his siblings he can tolerate. The only one other than his youngest sister I would do this for for the sheer enjoyment.**

And then he removed the sunglasses. 

**Where you're going, you won't need eyes to see.**

That evening footage from the Jump City jail would register the last moments of Arthur Light, when a figure seemed to materialize out of thin air and lean over him, and then he was found as other people had been found in the past. Caught in an eternal scream, his eyes torn out of his head, as if gnawed by tiny mouths. 

In Gotham City, in a cave, a man knelt pondering things when a very old chime caught his news.

A killing, one of the very first in years by the hitherto-forgotten serial killer known as the Corinthian.

Now _that_ was interesting.

_The Dreaming, Throneroom of Dream of the Endless:_

**It is done, my lord,** the Corinthian's low and echoing voice spoke. Dream had made him to be his tribute to humanity, but in a vanity he shared with Morpheus, he did not mind that his favorite Nightmare spoke with a lesser version of his own voice. 

**Arthur Light is no more.**

Dream nodded. 

He sighed, deeply.

**I should have done that for Calliope rather than having her rapist entrapped in nightmares.**

The Corinthian smiles. 

**Her rapist still lives my lord. Were you to will it done?**

Dream leaned forward and smiled. 

**_Now_ you're living up to your potential, my creation. Go forth and do what it is you are made to do. **

_Titans Tower, Raven's Bedroom:  
_

"Don't worry," she spoke as Rachel Roth, her voice low and soothing, as she remained comfortably on the other side of the bed. 

"We won't pressure you. Nor do we have any expectations tonight other than whatever makes you feel safest. You're sure you want to be here?"

Death nodded.

 ** _Nowhere else I want to be. I......let_** ** _Hazel know I'll meet her again tomorrow._** Her hands clenched slightly. **_Asked her to bring Fox and Alvie, too._**

She gave a soft bittersweet smile. 

_**But....thank you.**_ And with that she let herself rest in Raven's arms, with Starfire beside them both, as memories and new things danced behind her eyes.

_Earth-616:_

Watching Doctor Banner working with the justice League to defuse the latest scheme of Project Cadmus, Death pinched her nose. This wasn't working out at all as she had planned. Clearly Banner on his own wouldn't be near trouble enough. 

Musing, as she stroked her chin, the bones grinding against each other, she strode to her gallery of souls, before seeing a world burning as a monster fell from its skies.

_Surtur?_

Death turned to watch as Almerac brought the full weight of its power to bear against a giant the size of the largest whales, whose power gleamed the more dreadfully, and yet the full weight of Almerac's might could neither stop nor slow down what was coming.

_Outskirts of Tae Drac:_

Yeneli made planetfall in a massive eruption of fire and smoke that unleashed tsunamis around the world, kneeling with her blade, edge within the scabbard, pointed at the center. Her chest ached from the Godkiller, and she owed it to her very metaphysical nature, as well as the wards she'd placed that she was not a burned up wreck. A few words spoken in thunderous nature and the wounds within her were healed, and she raised herself to her feet, making it seem as if she'd knelt and merely spoken words of fell sorcery and that alone was what there was to it. 

She drew her blade from its scabbard and watched as the runes blazed into molten life, and then aimed the blade with point downward at the chip left by the scabbard.

**_Almerac burns!_ **

Her voice echoed across the world in the old tongue, an alien cry of terror and horror.

As the blade prepared to strike the ground, a force grasped her hands in a telekinetic embrace that froze her in mid-motion in a power that even she had to respect.

 _< Not if I have anything to say about it, beast!> _A vicious gaze on her face, Queen Maxima of Almerac floated down near the creature whose blade was poised to strike the ground. 


End file.
